The 11th NC's Colonel Leventhorpe-- Part 4: Wounded and a Union Prisoner

Once Col. Collett Leventhorpe was captured during the Confederate retreat from Gettysburg (probably at Falling Waters, Maryland), a Union surgeon tending him detected gangrene and suggested amputation. Leventhorpe refused (and with some medical background since he had studied medicine in Charleston, SC before the war) and had the surgeon cauterize the wounds with nitric acid.

He refused anesthesia, saying he "would have died, rather than let an enemy see that a Confederate officer could not endure anything without a complaint."

Afterwards, his arm discharged bone fragments for three months, but the colonel survived. Fort McHenry (I didn't know this famous War of 1812 fort had been used as a prison during the Civil War) in Baltimore and later Point Lookout were his prisons for eight months before he was exchanged.

During incarceration, friends in England sent money to purchase necessities.

--Old Secesh