Civil War reinactment

Today we headed over to the Wooden Nickel for a Civil War reinactment. We have friends that 'dress up' . They call themselves reinactors. This is Mrs. Varina Davis. First Lady of the Confederacy!

Here she is rolling bandages for the hospital. BH and I both helped. After rolling strips of bandages we pulled the loose threads from the rolls. There was a name for this, I forget now, but these loose threads were rolled up and used as plugs for round wounds. (read bullet holes)
This trio played wonderful music for us. They sang beautifully and played old songs from the civil war.

President Davis and Varina danced while they played.
They were so cute together. This couple has been married for over 30 years. They love to go to these reinactments and have doing it for years.

They even got BH in on the act. He looks a little uncomfortable, don't you think?

BH says she was a nice lady. In this pic she sort of looks like a man. Poor dear.

After the dance we had to check out the hospital. This is a mechanical hand that crawled out of a bloody bandage.

This poor soldier boy was seriously wounded. The doctor places a tournequett on his leg and uses cloriform to knock him out. Then he searches for the bullet, removes it, but then decdied that amputation was needed.

He makes it though the surgery but may later die from the unsanitary conditions.

The limb pile!

Did you know that horse hair was used as suture material? It was so course that it would tear the skin so they boiled it to soften it, this also sanitized it. They didn't know that then, they were not that knowlegable about germs back then.