![]() Mental ills were also a source of shame, especially for soldiers bred on Victorian notions of manliness and courage. Military and medical officials in the 1860s had little grasp of how war can scar minds as well as bodies. This grim tally, however, doesn’t include the conflict’s psychic wounds. The Civil War killed and injured over a million Americans, roughly a third of all those who served. He finally died there in 1911-casualty of a war he’d volunteered to fight a half-century before. Hildt remained withdrawn, apathetic, and at times so “excited and disturbed” that he hit other patients at the asylum. Hildt, a laborer who’d risen quickly in the ranks, had no prior history of mental illness, and his siblings wrote to the asylum expressing surprise that “his mind could not be restored to its original state.” But months and then years passed, without improvement. Hildt survived his physical wound but was transferred to the Government Hospital for the Insane in Washington D.C., suffering from “acute mania.” Doctors amputated his shattered limb close to the shoulder, causing a severe hemorrhage. The 25-year-old corporal from Michigan saw combat for the first time at the Seven Days Battle in Virginia, where he was shot in the right arm. ![]() In the summer of 1862, John Hildt lost a limb. ![]()
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