Knight Hospital Record, Vol. 1, No. 1-Vol. 1, No. 40. Jerome Coan [cover title] by Merchant, L. J., editor

A rare complete run of this Civil War hospital newspaper, composed and published at Knight Hospital in New Haven, CT, offering insight into the lives of hospitalized soldiers during the War.

Knight Hospital was one of nine Union hospitals where a newspaper was composed, edited, and published on site during and in the immediate wake of the Civil War. Published weekly, Knight Hospital Record ran for a total of forty issues. Doctors, nurses, clerks, chaplains, and convalescent patients contributed to these pages with literature and poetry, and also served as typesetters and editors.

The contents include short stories, jokes, local news, national news, lists of admissions, transfers, deaths, events at the hospital, notices, ads for local businesses, medical subjects (amputations, disability, mortality, etc.), accounts of battlefield experiences; Andersonville Prison; the capture of Jefferson Davis in petticoats; surrenders and victories; intemperance; the capture of Richmond, VA ("Richmond Ours!!! The City on Fire. Negro Troops occupy the place"); the treatment of POWs; the election of Lincoln and Johnson; guerrilla warfare, and so forth. The articles carry such titles as "Rebel Barbarity"; "A True 'Lincoln Story'"; "What is Consumed in a Hospital"; "Twenty-six Months in the Rebel Army"; "Captain Speke's Adventure with a Boa Constrictor"; "Grant and Lee's Handwriting," and "Inside View of the Rebel Capital." Recurring themes concern returning home, romantic longings, remembering of the dead, nostalgia, homesickness, and trauma. Vol. 1, No. 28 (12 Apr. 1865) and No. 29 (19 Apr. 1865) are especially noteworthy, as they concern the surrender of Gen. Robert E. Lee and the assassination of President Lincoln.

The Knight U.S. Army General Hospital was opened in 1862 to treat soldiers wounded during the Civil War after the directors of the State Hospital (predecessor of today's Yale-New Haven Hospital) leased the building to the U.S. government. After the military built temporary quarters on the hospital land, the facility could accommodate 1,500 patients. Over 25,000 soldiers were treated there from 1862 to 1865, the number of dying totaling around 200. The facility was named after Jonathan Knight (1789-1864), president of the Board of the Directors of the General Hospital Society of Connecticut, founding professor at Yale's Medical Institution (1813-64), and noted surgeon.

OCLC records issues of the Knight Hospital Record at eight institutions, only two outside of Connecticut.

REFERENCES: "Poems from the Knight Hospital Record" at the University of Connecticut Library online.