The "surgeon's desk" on the left was actually a portable office. In addition to some personal items, the desk contained a myriad of forms required by the Confederate Surgeon General. These included daily reports of sick call, the diseases encountered and their treatment. Battle injury reports detailed the type of injury, the surgical procedures performed and the evacuation destinations of the injured. Medical furlough forms and medical discharge forms were issued to soldiers released from duty for medical reasons, with copies forwarded to the unit commanders and the CS Medical Department.

After the war ended, the Union Surgeon General published a voluminous "Medical and Surgical History of the War of the Rebellion". No corresponding text emerged from Confederate sources because Union troops burned CS Surgeon General Samuel Moore's house in April of 1865 and destroyed his very meticulous records.

On the right is shown a "trephine kit". This surgical set is used to drill holes in the skull (trephining). The procedure was first performed in ancient Egypt and was practiced in the Americas by the Incas. CW surgeons performed 10,000 trephine procedures to relieve subdural hematomas (bleeding inside the skull), and to relieve depressed skull fractures (removing bone fragments from the brain). Although the mortality from this procedure was 90 percent, 1,000 soldiers lived who would otherwise have surely died.