Armor

[Subdeacon Joe]

Joe Lovell

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Shared with Public

 

 

 

 

 

 

National Museum of Civil War Medicine

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In July 1863, the US Army Surgeon General sent Surgeon John Brinton to the site of the Battle of Gettysburg to assist in the recovery and treatment of wounded soldiers on the battlefield.

While passing over the war-torn landscape, Brinton - the curator of the Army Medical Museum at the time - came across a peculiar sight.

From Brinton's memoir:

"As usual after battles, many of the killed were buried in trenches or pits. One of my men on this occasion took from the body of a Southern soldier, a breast plate of soft steel, in two halves, intended to be worn under the coat or best.

"One ball had struck it and indented or bent it without perforation. Another, if I remember rightly, had passed through in the region of the liver, causing the death of the wearer...

"This cuirass was placed in the Army Museum, and I suppose is there now. It was the only example of defensive armor I met with during the war."

Indeed, the plate remains with the collections of the Army Medical Museum held by our friends at the National Museum of Health and Medicine in Silver Spring, Maryland.

From their description of the remarkable object: "An iron breastplate, half of a defensive cuirass, perforated, perhaps by rifle balls. Taken from the body of a Confederate soldier killed on July 3, 1863 at the battle of Gettysburg."

Source:

"Personal Memoirs of John H. Brinton, Major and Surgeon U.S.V., 1861-1865," 1914. Page 245.

Image credit:

Iron breastplate (AFIP 337711), National Museum of Health and Medicine, Historical Collections.

[watab kid]

i cant think that folks didnt dream up such , after all cast iron was used in a spaghetti western , 

[Utah Bob #35998]

https://encyclopediavirginia.org/142hpr-af39ad5b7337080/

[Utah Bob #35998]

https://americanhistory.si.edu/explore/stories/failed-objects-bullet-proof-vests-and-design-american-civil-war