Amputation being performed in a hospital tent, Gettysburg, July 1863
Courtesy National Archives and Records Administration

Life and Limb: The Toll of the Civil War presents the following instructional resources for educators in K-12 as well as in higher education institutions. The resources provide examples of how the rich content and primary sources in the exhibition can be used in a classroom. They are developed as instructional suggestions that an educator may adapt in whole or in parts as she or he deems most appropriate for the students' interest and academic goals.

Lesson Plans

U.S. Civil War: Wounded Soldiers, Disabled Veterans and U.S. Civil War: Living With Battlefield Injuries are lesson plans prepared for middle- and high-school classes, respectively. Each lesson plan contains background information, relevant academic topics, national standards, learning outcomes, step-by-step procedures, and all instructional materials that include several historical primary sources.

The lesson plans have been developed in collaboration with Janet Collier at the Jewish Primary Day School of the Nation's Capital (Washington, D.C.), and Richard Bland, Ph.D., who recently retired from teaching at Rogers High School (Rogers, AR)

Higher Education

Reconstructing State and Soldier: Disability and the American Civil War and The Ordeal of War are modules developed for undergraduate and graduate courses to accompany the National Library of Medicine exhibition Life and Limb: The Toll of the Civil War. The modules are authored respectively by Susan-Mary Grant, Ph.D., Professor of American History at Newcastle University, United Kingdom, and Peter Carmichael, Ph.D., the Fluhrer Professor of History and the Director of the Civil War Institute at Gettysburg College in Pennsylvania, United States.