Published: September 23, 2009 09:32 am      

RANDOM THOUGHTS: Remembering the Guiding Light

There are still a few of us who remember that radio was the introduction to a new world. We learned to be good listeners. There were shows for kids as well as soap operas but they were both squeaky clean. There was Ma Perkins and then 72 years ago "Guiding Light" appeared. When television came along that show moved to the tube and became a daytime favorite. After all those years "Guiding Light" made its farewell appearance on September 18, 2009.

On that date I was researching another event that began on September 17, 1862, and found another flesh and blood person who was truly a "Guiding Light." A doctor, little known in the general population today but much admired in the medical world, Major Jonathan Letterman was the director of medicine for the Army of the Potomac and a Union surgeon.

Before that terrible Battle of Antietam, sometimes called the Battle of Sharpsburg, began Letterman had established field-dressing stations next to battlefields, field hospitals in barns and houses close to the action and even alerted larger hospitals in surrounding towns.

Letterman chose to conduct his work from the Pry House and barn. This handsome three-story brick home was built in 1844 for Phillip Pry. A wealthy man he owned 25 acres surrounding the home and barn. Because of its location Union General George B. McClellan also made his headquarters in the Pry House.

The first battle to take place on Northern soil began at 5:30 a.m., September 17, and continued until 5:30 p.m. In that short 12-hour period it became the bloodiest single day battle in American history. The wounded were carried in horse-drawn wagons to field-dressing stations where if their injuries were severe they were sent on to a field hospital. Today Letterman’s triage model is standard in emergency rooms.

On that September day there were nearly 23,000 casualties — 3,700 killed, 17,300 wounded and 1,800 captured or missing. Because of Dr. Letterman’s foresight the medical corp had found all the wounded by the evening of the next day. Later Letterman wrote that considering the magnitude of the battle, “It is a matter of congratulations to speak of the expeditious and careful manner in which the wounded were removed from the field.”

In October 1862, Dr. Letterman used his lessons from that day to develop a reorganization of the military medical system. In addition to triage he included the success of the supply chain he used to carry bandages and medicines which allowed the military to travel lighter and lessened the risk of losing or wasting medical supplies. Those ideas are now housed in the Pry House Field Hospital Museum which opened to the public in 2006. The house holds many exhibits of medical artifacts from the Civil War period. It is a second site run by the National Museum of Civil War Medicine located in Frederick, MD about 15 miles east. That facility opened there in 1996 because they were not able to find a location on the battlefield. With the addition of Pry House they feel their first dream is fulfilled.

Both museums are part of the National Park Service. The Pry House holds five-day symposiums three times a year for military medical commands and the U.S. Public Health Service. These training sessions include the many contributions Letterman made which are still standard practices.

One of the attendees wrote, “Your efforts have proven indispensable to those military officers in harms way and those leading federal treatment facilities in garrison who are fighting one common cause, the global war on terrorism. You are making better, stronger and more confident leaders of us all.”

Known as the father of modern battlefield medicine because of his reorganization of the military medical system Dr. Jonathan Letterman served as the "Guiding Light."