Dr. David B. Levine to present Heberden Society Lecture January 23, 4:30pm

David B. Levine, M.D.

Emeritus Professor, Clinical Orthopaedic Surgery

Weill Cornell Medical College

Director, Alumni Association and Archives

Hospital for Special Surgery

will present the winter 2013 Heberden Society lecture.

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The Civil War and its Casualties


Wednesday, January 23, 2013. 4:30 p.m.

Weill Cornell Medical College, 1300 York Avenue

Uris Faculty Room (A-126)

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Dr. Levine's talk will be followed by a reception:

Samuel J. Wood Medical Library, room C-115, 5:30 p.m.

in celebration of the traveling exhibition Life and Limb: the Toll of the American Civil War. This exhibition was developed and produced by the National Library of Medicine, National Institutes of Health.


In addition, an exhibition prepared by the Medical Center Archives highlights New York Hospital physicians and future faculty of the Cornell University Medical College who served in the Civil War.

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From the beginning of the Civil War in April 1861, until the Confederate States surrendered in April 1865, the casualties and deaths on both sides were monumental, changing the face of medical care in the United States, resulting in the creation of the Army Medical Corps, and taking medical care in the United States out of the "dark ages of medicine". New statistics reported in December 2011 by J. David Hacker, PhD, of the history department of Binghamton University, raise the death toll of the Civil War over 20% of what had been previously known. Disease accounted for twice as many deaths as battlefield injuries. Civil War era medicines and drugs available were generally without any scientific basis, and treatment often consisted of bleeding and mercurial purging (Blue Mass). Many believed in theories of "miasma" causing diseases such as cholera, chlamydia and malaria. Advanced military methods, with the introduction of the Minié ball, resulted in more devastating wounds. Over 60,000 amputations in the North and the South were performed, each taking an average of 15 minutes. Surgeons were often operating for 48 hours straight. Black soldiers contracted diseases nine times higher than battlefield injuries, receiving inferior care compared to white soldiers. There was only one woman physician, Mary Walker, M.D., who masqueraded as a Union officer. Death toll figures were higher than from all combined wars fought by the United States from 1917 to 2011.


About the speaker

Appointed first Director of the Hospital for Special Surgery (HSS) Alumni Association in 2003,David B. Levine has published over a dozen articles on the history of medicine in the past 30 years. His book on the history of HSS, the oldest orthopaedic hospital in the country, will be published with eight other contributors in March, 2013, as Anatomy of a Hospital. It will mark the Sesquicentennial Celebration of HSS (1863-2013), featured at the 150th HSS Scientific Symposium, May 2-4, 2013.

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A member of the Class of 1954 of Dartmouth College, Levine was awarded his medical degree from SUNY Upstate Medical University College of Medicine in 1957. He interned at Case Western Reserve's Metropolitan General Hospital, was a surgical resident at Harvard's Beth Israel Hospital and spent two years on active duty as a Lieutenant in the Medical Corps of the U.S. Navy, serving aboard the USS Forrestal in the Sixth Fleet. Following graduation as an orthopaedic resident at HSS in 1964, Levine spent a year as a scoliosis fellow at University of Southern California's Rancho Los Amigos Hospital, returning to HSS in 1966 to become Director of Scoliosis in 1967 and Director of Orthopaedic Surgery in 1986. Retiring from active patient care in 1995, he moved with his wife Janet, an artist, to Florence, Italy, where he lectured at Careggi Orthopaedic Hospital, restored antique furniture, and mastered Italian cooking. He returned to New York in 1997. A fellow of the American Academy of Orthopaedic Surgeons, the American Orthopaedic Association, founder and Past President of the Scoliosis Research Society, Dr. Levine is currently Historian of the Association of Bone and Joint Surgeons.


The Heberden Society, which seeks to promote an interest in the history of medicine, was founded in 1975. With funding from the Weill Cornell Medical College Office of the Dean, the society presents a series of lectures during each academic year.