hen one thinks of injuries received in battle during the Revolutionary War wounds from gunshots, bayonets and swords come to mind. A far less common wound was that of a scalping victim. In most cases the scalping victim was already dead or soon would be dead when the scalping took place. There were however instances where a person was scalped and either was not otherwise wounded or the wound was not mortal. The problem then becomes how to medically treat a patient with a scalped head.
Despite the fact that scalping had been practiced for centuries and some victims lived through their ordeal, the literature of the period is mostly silent on the techniques for treating the wound. Samuel Sharpe’s 1769 Treatise on the Operations of Surgery does not mention any scalping treatments.[1] Likewise, John Jones’ Plain Concise Practical Remarks on the Treatment of Wounds and Fractures written in 1776 for the Patriot surgeon facing battle casualties ignores the possibility of a live scalping victim.[2]
