Voices from the past: Mental and physical outcomes described by American Civil War amputees.

Studies of trauma commonly concentrate on the psychological and physiological effects of recent violent events. Although today connections are becoming more explicitly drawn, early studies of the aftermath of amputation serve to shed light on modern understanding of the interaction of the physical and emotional. The study of combat amputation, dissociation, and related posttraumatic stress largely began with the work of 19th-century Philadelphia physician Silas Weir Mitchell, who brought attention to the phenomenon of phantom limb pain.