Stonewall Jackson (1824-63) and 'The Old Man's Friend'

In May 1863 at the Battle of Chancellorsville in the American Civil War, Lieutenant General Thomas J 'Stonewall' Jackson received three gunshot wounds and subsequently underwent amputation of his left arm. Four days after his operation Jackson developed pneumonia and died three days later. Some modern physicians have challenged the diagnosis of pneumonia and have suggested other diseases as the being the likely cause of his death. Reviewing the accounts of Jackson's course of illness in the context of 19th-century medical knowledge supports the original diagnosis of pneumonia as the cause of his death.