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- Feb 5, 2017
From the National Museum of Civil War Medicine (with permission)
One of the first successful operations of plastic surgery was performed on Private Carleton Burgan.
Private Burgan contracted pneumonia in Winchester, Virginia and was admitted to U.S. General Hospital #1 in Frederick, Maryland (just a few blocks from our museum) on August 4, 1862.
Doctors treated the pneumonia with mercury. The subsequent poisoning caused Burgan to develop a jagged ulcer in his mouth. Within weeks the ulceration had destroyed the right side of his face from his upper lip to his eye.
He underwent a series of operations performed by Dr. Gurdon Buck, the father of American plastic surgery. By June 1864, Burgan had regained his health and served as an assistant nurse in a ward of New York's City Hospital.
He married in 1866, raised a large family, and passed away in 1915.
Want to learn more about facial reconstruction in the Civil War era? Check out this blog post on the topic
https://www.civilwarmed.org/facial-reconstruction/
Image credits:
Left - Private Burgan in 1862; Right - Private Burgan after his final reconstructive surgery; Both images courtesy of the National Museum of Health and Medicine, Otis Historical Archives.
One of the first successful operations of plastic surgery was performed on Private Carleton Burgan.
Private Burgan contracted pneumonia in Winchester, Virginia and was admitted to U.S. General Hospital #1 in Frederick, Maryland (just a few blocks from our museum) on August 4, 1862.
Doctors treated the pneumonia with mercury. The subsequent poisoning caused Burgan to develop a jagged ulcer in his mouth. Within weeks the ulceration had destroyed the right side of his face from his upper lip to his eye.
He underwent a series of operations performed by Dr. Gurdon Buck, the father of American plastic surgery. By June 1864, Burgan had regained his health and served as an assistant nurse in a ward of New York's City Hospital.
He married in 1866, raised a large family, and passed away in 1915.
Want to learn more about facial reconstruction in the Civil War era? Check out this blog post on the topic
https://www.civilwarmed.org/facial-reconstruction/Image credits:
Left - Private Burgan in 1862; Right - Private Burgan after his final reconstructive surgery; Both images courtesy of the National Museum of Health and Medicine, Otis Historical Archives.
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