Gettysburg: Farnsworth House Surgeon's Reenactment Program｜United States

A guest favorite lauded for its realism and truthful depictions with real medically trained performers. Learn about the realities of Civil War medicine through a historically grounded presentation. When the cannons opened fire on July 1, 1863, the farmhouses and homes of Gettysburg were transformed in an instant. Parlors became wards. Dining tables became operating tables. And ordinary kitchens, like this one, became the last desperate hope for thousands of shattered, broken men.

Now, gathered around this very hearthside kitchen, an Army Field Surgeon takes you inside the horrifying, and heroic, world of battlefield medicine as it truly was. Drawn directly from personal medical expertise, historical surgical texts, and the actual diaries and field notes of Civil War army surgeons, this presentation holds nothing back.

Witness the bone saw in action. Understand the brutal calculus of an amputation that had to be completed rapidly or the patient wouldn’t survive the blood loss. Learn which diseases killed far more men than any bullet, and how surgeons fought them with little more than desperation and instinct.

This is not a lecture. This is a living, breathing immersion into the operating theater of 1863, complete with surgical recreations and firsthand accounts.