The army supplied no field medical packets to individual soldiers during the Civil War so commercial suppliers stepped in. Soldier letters and memoirs occasionally mention going into action with a bandage or tourniquet in a pocket. A wound to the body might be more than a soldier, or even a surgeon at the time could deal with, but tourniquets were a natural measure to cope with wounds to limbs.

Dr. Thomas Lambert devised and patented a tourniquet in January 1862, using a 1½” wide herringbone twill strap to link two concave metal pads on the affected limb to stanch blood flow.

This excavated specimen is one of the metal pads with its folding brackets. In rusty, uncoated condition, yet completely stable.

Recovered near Fredericksburg, Virginia.  [jet] [ph:L]

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