MS-161: Ellen Wild Letters

The Ellen Wild Letters Collection contains 21 letters, primarily featuring letters written in 1862 to 1865. The majority of the letters come from 1862, but several also come from her time following the Civil War. The letters recount Mrs. Wild’s time during the Civil War, waiting for news from her husband as well as surviving on the home front. She recounts Edward Wild’s adventures during the war, his life in camp, and his numerous woundings and ailments. Mrs. Wild discusses her husband’s involvement in North Carolina as well as with the free African Americans. She briefly mentions the Battle of Gettysburg and defends Joseph Hooker’s actions at the Battle of Chancellorsville. She gives her opinion about how the Civil War could be ended; saying that all that was required was the defeat of Robert E. Lee. In 1864, she follows Edward, taking residence in Norfolk, Virginia while her husband reports to Benjamin Butler. Mrs. Wild comments on Butler’s actions during this period of the war, and makes short mention of the battles occurring around Petersburg and Richmond. She continues to write about Edward Wild’s service in the American Army, noting his actions in Virginia as well as his state of mind during the late stages of the war. Following the American Civil War, letters from 1891 and 1892 recount Mr. Wild’s life during Reconstruction in Massachusetts. The letters pick up just a few months after Edward’s death, with many recounting the decisions Mrs. Wild had to make for herself as well as the struggles of living without her husband. She must decide what to do with the body of her husband as well as locating and processing his will to receive his estate. The will had been lost in Canada, and her letters recount her finding it once more with the help of her friends and Edward’s wartime contemporaries. Throughout these years, she is very ill, weak and fragile in the aftermath of her husband’s death. She also is taking care of her cousin Katy Wild, who is slowly dying of Pancreas cancer. Mrs. Wild goes into detail in almost every letter about Katy’s condition, with the series of letters ending before Katy passes. This group of letters talks about life after the Civil War and the affects Mrs. Wild can still see from it, even from the state of Massachusetts. Many years are missing in the series, including everything from 1866 to 1890. Several letters from each year are missing as well, and there is no continual narrative throughout. There are no replies back to Ellen Wild, just the letters written by her but she manages to answer many of the questions raised in a previous letter. Special Collections and College Archives Finding Aids are discovery tools used to describe and provide access to our holdings. Finding aids include historical and biographical information about each collection in addition to inventories of their content. More information about our collections can be found on our website http://www.gettysburg.edu/special_collections/collections/.https://cupola.gettysburg.edu/findingaidsall/1161/thumbnail.jp

Murder in Manassas: Mental Illness and Psychological Trauma After the Civil War

Following the American Civil War, the small railroad junction of Manassas, Virginia grew into one of the most prominent towns in the region with the help of town founder William S. Fewell and his family. In 1872, the youngest daughter of the prominent Fewell family was seduced and abducted by Prince Williams County’s Commonwealth Attorney and most prominent orator, James F. Clark without warning. Having just come home from three years of military service in the Civil War, witnessing the death of his twin brother as well as suffering for a year in Elmira Prison as a prisoner of war, Lucien N. Fewell walked into Clark’s jail and murdered his younger sister’s abductor. Acquitted of murder on the terms of mental illness, Lucien Fewell continued to live a life of violence caused by his traumatic experiences during the Civil War. Like many soldiers who came home from the Civil War, Lucien Fewell gives historians an insight into those who came home with combat-induced mental illnesses, as he came back from his military services a changed and violent man

Confederate War Etchings: Adalbert J. Volck’s Visual Depiction of the Confederate War Effort

During the Civil War, both the Union and the Confederacy utilized art to convey their sentiments regarding different aspects of the war. Most Civil War enthusiasts often recall drawings and cartoons by Thomas Nast when they think about political cartoons of the 19th century. Nast drew numerous cartoons for the Northern newspaper Harpers Weekly, commenting frequently on the Confederate States of America, the Civil War, as well as the political corruption of the era. Nast grew in fame across the Union, but the Confederacy, too, had its share of political cartoons and drawings that criticized the Northern war effort. Though not very popular during the Civil War, Adalbert J. Volck created political cartoons that resonated strongly with the Confederate war effort and the Lost Cause following 1865. [excerpt

Right to Serve, Right to Lead: Lives and Legacies of the USCT

This is a catalog for an exhibit that follows the evolution of African-American participation in the Civil War, from slaves, to contrabands, to soldiers of the United States Colored Troops (USCT), as well as the lives of black veterans beyond the war, and their ultimate military and social legacy. Using a variety of period items, it creates a narrative that stretches from the Antebellum Period to the current day. In doing so, the exhibit shows how black sacrifice on the battlefield redefined the war\u27s purpose throughout the divided nation, how Jim Crowe suppressed the memory of black participation after Reconstruction, and how the illustrious African-American military tradition left by the USCT endures to this day in their modern heirs

A Conditional Protein Degradation System To Study Essential Gene Function in Cryptosporidium parvum

Cryptosporidium parvum and Cryptosporidium hominis are leading pathogens responsible for diarrheal disease (cryptosporidiosis) and deaths in infants and children below 5 years of age. There are no effective treatment options and no vaccine for cryptosporidiosis. Therefore, there is an urgent need to identify essential gene targets and uncover their biological function to accelerate the development of new and effective anticryptosporidial drugs. Current genetic tool allows targeted disruption of gene function but leads to parasite lethality if the gene is essential for survival. In this study, we have developed a genetic tool for conditional degradation of proteins in Cryptosporidium spp., thus allowing us to study the function of essential genes. Our conditional system expands the molecular toolbox for Cryptosporidium, and it will help us to understand the biology of this important human diarrheal pathogen for the development of new drugs and vaccines.Cryptosporidium spp., protozoan parasites, are a leading cause of global diarrhea-associated morbidity and mortality in young children and immunocompromised individuals. The limited efficacy of the only available drug and lack of vaccines make it challenging to treat and prevent cryptosporidiosis. Therefore, the identification of essential genes and understanding their biological functions are critical for the development of new therapies. Currently, there is no genetic tool available to investigate the function of essential genes in Cryptosporidium spp. Here, we describe the development of the first conditional system in Cryptosporidium parvum. Our system utilizes the Escherichia coli dihydrofolate reductase degradation domain (DDD) and the stabilizing compound trimethoprim (TMP) for conditional regulation of protein levels in the parasite. We tested our system on the calcium-dependent protein kinase-1 (CDPK1), a leading drug target in C. parvum. By direct knockout strategy, we establish that cdpk1 is refractory to gene deletion, indicating its essentiality for parasite survival. Using CRISPR/Cas9, we generated transgenic parasites expressing CDPK1 with an epitope tag, and localization studies indicate its expression during asexual parasite proliferation. We then genetically engineered C. parvum to express CDPK1 tagged with DDD. We demonstrate that TMP can regulate CDPK1 levels in this stable transgenic parasite line, thus revealing the critical role of this kinase in parasite proliferation. Further, these transgenic parasites show TMP-mediated regulation of CDPK1 levels in vitro and an increased sensitivity to kinase inhibitor upon conditional knockdown. Overall, this study reports the development of a powerful conditional system that can be used to study essential genes in Cryptosporidium

Uproar on Campus: Student Protests in the Vietnam War Era

The Vietnam War was one of the most polarizing events in United States history. Protesters angered by a decade of controversial policy decisions in Vietnam opposed what they believed to be an unfair and corrupt political system waging an unpopular war. As the antiwar movement began to gain momentum in the late 1960s and early 1970s, college students took leading roles, protesting not only against the war, but also against conventional forms of authority and social norms. Student protesters embraced a philosophy of free love, and peace and justice for all that had its roots in the radical counterculture movement that started in the early 1960s. The Vietnam War opened an ideological rift between Americans. The radical ideas of student protesters, and the antiwar movement more broadly, met opposition from the US government, as well as from supporters of the war. Americans on both side of this divide banded together to print and distribute materials across the country in the hopes of gaining support and recognition for their respective causes. The artifacts in this exhibit are drawn from the Radical Pamphlets Collection housed in Gettysburg College’s Musselman Library. These artifacts have been selected to provide a taste of what it might have been like to be a college student during the Vietnam War era

Large-scale cross-societal examination of real- and minimal-group biases

Biases in favor of culturally prevalent social ingroups are ubiquitous, but random assignment to arbitrary experimentally created social groups is also sufficient to create ingroup biases (i.e., the minimal group effect; MGE). The extent to which ingroup bias arises from specific social contexts versus more general psychological tendencies remains unclear. This registered report focuses on three questions. First, how culturally prevalent is the MGE? Second, how do critical cultural and individual factors moderate its strength? Third, does the MGE meaningfully relate to culturally salient real-world ingroup biases? We compare the MGE to bias in favor of a family member (first cousin) and a national ingroup member. We propose to recruit a sample of > 200 participants in each of > 50 nations to examine these questions and advance our understanding of the psychological foundations and cultural prevalence of ingroup bias

Global variation in postoperative mortality and complications after cancer surgery: a multicentre, prospective cohort study in 82 countries

© 2021 The Author(s). Published by Elsevier Ltd. This is an Open Access article under the CC BY-NC-ND 4.0 licenseBackground: 80% of individuals with cancer will require a surgical procedure, yet little comparative data exist on early outcomes in low-income and middle-income countries (LMICs). We compared postoperative outcomes in breast, colorectal, and gastric cancer surgery in hospitals worldwide, focusing on the effect of disease stage and complications on postoperative mortality. Methods: This was a multicentre, international prospective cohort study of consecutive adult patients undergoing surgery for primary breast, colorectal, or gastric cancer requiring a skin incision done under general or neuraxial anaesthesia. The primary outcome was death or major complication within 30 days of surgery. Multilevel logistic regression determined relationships within three-level nested models of patients within hospitals and countries. Hospital-level infrastructure effects were explored with three-way mediation analyses. This study was registered with ClinicalTrials.gov, NCT03471494. Findings: Between April 1, 2018, and Jan 31, 2019, we enrolled 15 958 patients from 428 hospitals in 82 countries (high income 9106 patients, 31 countries; upper-middle income 2721 patients, 23 countries; or lower-middle income 4131 patients, 28 countries). Patients in LMICs presented with more advanced disease compared with patients in high-income countries. 30-day mortality was higher for gastric cancer in low-income or lower-middle-income countries (adjusted odds ratio 3·72, 95% CI 1·70–8·16) and for colorectal cancer in low-income or lower-middle-income countries (4·59, 2·39–8·80) and upper-middle-income countries (2·06, 1·11–3·83). No difference in 30-day mortality was seen in breast cancer. The proportion of patients who died after a major complication was greatest in low-income or lower-middle-income countries (6·15, 3·26–11·59) and upper-middle-income countries (3·89, 2·08–7·29). Postoperative death after complications was partly explained by patient factors (60%) and partly by hospital or country (40%). The absence of consistently available postoperative care facilities was associated with seven to 10 more deaths per 100 major complications in LMICs. Cancer stage alone explained little of the early variation in mortality or postoperative complications. Interpretation: Higher levels of mortality after cancer surgery in LMICs was not fully explained by later presentation of disease. The capacity to rescue patients from surgical complications is a tangible opportunity for meaningful intervention. Early death after cancer surgery might be reduced by policies focusing on strengthening perioperative care systems to detect and intervene in common complications. Funding: National Institute for Health Research Global Health Research Unit