Historian Lindsay Rae Smith Privette discusses the wartime evolution in military surgeons' training, knowledge, and practices.
Civil War Breakthroughs is a podcast that explores how the inventions, ideas, and innovations of the Civil War era defined a new kind of conflict. In our second season, The Medical Renaissance, we'll explore how modern medicine took root during the Civil War.
On this episode, we're joined by Lindsay Rae Smith Privette, an associate professor of history at Anderson University and author of The Surgeon’s Battle: How Medicine Won the Vicksburg Campaign and Changed the Civil War (2025). She talks about the wartime evolution in military surgeons' training, knowledge, and practices.