Today we are excited to welcome Eric Scott Fischl to The Speculative Herald. His book Dr Potter’s Medicine Show, released February 7, 2017. Be sure to check out the details below, it’s a post-cival war featuring quite an interesting cast of characters! Tents, Saws, and Ether: Civil War Medicine by Eric Scott Fischl The eponymous protagonist of my novel DR POTTER’S MEDICINE SHOW, Dr Alexander Potter, is a former Civil War surgeon. A haunted man, he’s the self-professed “fastest man with a bone-saw in the Hospital Corps”. As a history aficionado, I went into the book thinking I had a fairly reasonable understanding of what medicine and surgery was like during the war; namely, I had visions of filth-caked surgeons hacking limbs off with saws, while the unfortunate patient was held down by burly men, a Minié ball jammed into his mouth to bite on. When I started researching the book, though, I learned that that image, while having some veracity, was only partly true. I’m a fiction writer, and not a historian, and there were a few items that were not quite as historically accurate that I chose to keep in the book for purposes of story. The real…
