Raynors HCA 2019-01
This lot is closed for bidding. Bidding ended on 2/21/2019
Pay voucher for Middleton Goldsmith, boldly signed “M. Goldsmith Brig Surg.” 1pp. oblong double folio, September 1, 1864, listing his two negro servants. Fine condition. Middleton Goldsmith was a surgeon in the Union Army during the American Civil War working primarily in the Louisville, Kentucky area. He was born in Port Tobacco, Maryland in 1818, the son of surgeon Alban Goldsmith. His father was the professor of Surgery at Kentucky School of Medicine in Louisville in the mid-1830s, and Middleton served as his anatomy and surgical assistant. Middle enrolled in the New York College of Physicians and Surgeons in 1837 and graduated in 1840. He was a multi-talented and very popular young man who played guitar and banjo, knew Greek and Latin, and was an excellent storyteller. He cofounded the New York Pathologic Society and in 1844 became Chair of Surgery at Castleton Medical College in Vermont. After 12 years, he succeeded his father as Chair of Surgery at Kentucky School of Medicine, soon becoming the Dean of Faculty. Goldsmith joined the Union Army at the outbreak of the Civil War as a Brigade Surgeon and was quickly appointed Surgeon-in-Chief of all military hospitals in Kentucky and the Army of the Ohio, supervising the daily operations of multiple hospitals. It is commonly accepted that Louis Pasteur is the father of microbiology and Joseph Lister is the father of antisepsis. Middleton Goldsmith, a surgeon in the Union Army during the American Civil War, meticulously studied hospital gangrene and developed a revolutionary treatment regimen. The cumulative Civil War hospital gangrene mortality was 45 per cent. Goldsmith's method, which he applied to over 330 cases, yielded a mortality under 3 per cent. His innovative work predated Pasteur and Lister, making his success truly remarkable and worthy of historical and surgical note.
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