Reenactments in the Rain

It was making down like a drizzle on and off yesterday at the Wade House.  The 10:30 cavalry skirmish was canceled, but they were able to recreate part of the Battle of South Mountain.  I haven't studied South Mountain that much, but it was one of the events leading up to Antietam in 1862.  
        One of the highlights of yesterday's fight was the one brown horse was actually being obedient this year.  In the past that horse would panic at sound of a gunshot.  This year, he was listening to his master a lot more, for which I am glad.  When I saw the horse's nervousness the first year, it was mildly understandable.  But it got annoying in the following years. 

The Medical Demonstrations are always as must.  One reenactress is actually descended from the very first woman doctor Rebecca Chisholm.  She even has some of her ancestress' original medical tools!  The stories of Civil War hospitals being complete hellholes were exaggerated to varying degrees, but then again a lot of these guys are in searing agony and doctors still didn't know much of what we do now.  But the piles of dead arms and legs were blown out of proportion after the Battle of Gettysburg (the weather had been very hot that time and there was a shortage of water for the field hospitals).  
          The reenactors show how surgeons did their jobs back in the 1860s.  Among other things they showed was an early version of the stethoscope.  Apparently it was invented because doctors had to press their ear against the patient's chest to listen to the heartbeat, and you can imagine how awkward it must have been for male doctors when they had to do it with a woman patient.  So someone made a little trumpet-like tool press against the patient's chest so as to make hearing the heartbeat easier with minimal physical contact.  
      The doctor's performed a simulated operation on a dummy whereby they try to remove a bullet from a patient's wounded leg.  If the bullet does not appear to have broken the bone, they can save the limb.  If the bone is broken, they may have to amputate the limb to save the person's life.  Sometimes they might try "sectioning", carefully removing an inch of the broken bone, which would render the limb slightly shorter than before.  The doctor's desk had an array of medical books and little bottles of medicines. 
[During the surgery simulator one little boy kept hiding his face in his mother's shirt.  No surprise there, the concept of cutting someone open is very disturbing to the majority of people.] 

Because of the drizzle it was muddy out.  It was also chilly and we had to get my boyfriend a pair of mittens because his hands got cold quickly.  It also meant that we were pressing close together to keep warm.  He and I tend to do that anyway, but the cold weather made it all the more necessary because sweaters and cardigans aren't quite enough when the temperature is less than 50 degrees Fahrenheit.  
          One of the stalls was selling smoking hats.  I was a little surprised because they looked exactly like the hats worn by people in Qing Dynasty China.  At the time, partly thanks to the two Opium Wars, people in China took to smoking in certain rooms.  This also took off in the U.S. and Europe, and Chinese-style smoking jackets and smoking hats were popular.  Men wore them over their regular clothes so that the tobacco did not stick to them.  I have been in a house where people were smoking all the time, and the smell of tobacco never leaves the place.

We got turned around several time going to the Kettle Moraine Visitor's Center and we got there twenty minutes before closing time.  But were able to enjoy ten minutes of the little museum and getting my boyfriend a mammoth T-Shirt.  It was too wet and chilly to go out on the observation deck, though.