Ally Bireley Mr. Cone APUSH - 1st 24 February 2017 A Soldier’s Tale Amongst almost 3 million Civil War soldiers, over 600,000 lost their lives defending their notions of freedom and liberty in America. Approximately two-thirds of these soldiers, nonetheless, died from disease rather than wounds received on the battlefield. Lack of efficient medicine and health care caused much more impacting damage, as well as scarce, not up-to-date resources, and social divisions between the soldiers. Typically, an average Civil War soldier could expect to face extreme hardships and difficulties in their wartime lifestyles, including bad weather, unprepared, inappropriate clothing, spreading infections, and tensions regarding race and gender. Across …show more content…
According to Schroeder-Lein, of the two amputation methods, Confederate doctors preferred and further developed the circular operation which was more efficient and less painful, while the Union doctors leaned toward the faster flap operation. Combined, soldiers on both sides received over 50,000 amputations, with a 27% mortality rate. Over time, the doctors transitioned towards performing more excisions of bone fragments and application of splints once realized that they could avoid amputations (Schroeder-Lein, 520). Also with the onset of the Civil War came the conversion of popular anesthesia from ether to chloroform, the safer substance that led to the administration of anesthesia in areas will good air circulation, like the procedure would be performed today if chloroform were the last resort (Schroeder-Lein, 613-633). Innately, soldiers feared the endless possibilities of blood loss, gangrene, et cetera, and experienced historic levels of discomfort and death. Rather it be experiencing extreme passion to discover the world, patriotism and determinism to fight for their beliefs, or simply a desire to help, many women joined the Civil War. As an amazing step of progress in history, these heroes effectively challenged traditional values
Medicine played and still plays a major part in the world. However, modern medicine did not prosper until long after the civil war, which we can assure are some of the reasons many soldiers and residents lives were compromised. From amputations, sanitation, a lack of surgeons and supplies with, contagious fevers and diseases a great deal of people went long winters and summers suffering from things that doctors were incapable of curing solely based on the fact medicine had not reached the level of quality and quantity it needed to be at the time.
The shock of amputation sparked fear into thousands of civil war soldiers. Before the gilded age, patients resented surgery due to the pain associated with it. The main anesthesthetics that were used were hashish, Mandrake, alcohol, and opium. Surgery before the gilded age consisted of speed to lessen pain but it created hostile and often cruel conditions for the patient.
The Civil War had a tremendous death toll. In fact, it had more deaths than any of the previous wars combined. At the time, it was thought that the soldiers in battle died from the wounds or amputations they received. The true cause of death came from disease. These harsh conditions were contributed by unqualified doctors and non-sterile equipment. During the Civil War, the true issue was not only the wounds received in battle but the infectious diseases that ultimately led to the soldier’s death. When this was discovered, doctors knew some action needed to take place. Hospitals and sanitation standards were improved. The Civil War contributed to an evolution of medicine and how to combat victims plagued with disease.
John Burford, a Brigadier General, had received a bullet to the knee during the Second Battle of Manassas. Luckily Buford’s bullet wound wasn’t too serious. If the wound had been serious, it would have been treated with amputations and since there were no anesthetics back then, the person getting amputated on would feel all the pain. Surgeries during the Civil War were performed unsanitary. Surgeons would not wash their hands before operating and would wear blood splattered clothing. The instruments used for operating were never disinfected properly. Instead, they would dip their instruments in cold water, often bloody from the prior operation. Buford had died in December 1863 of
During the Civil War, medicine was an important aspect for every soldier due to the fact that many soldiers had to fight and ended up with injuries also there were many types of illnesses. In this essay, I will focus on the advance of medicine during the Civil War. Also how the soldiers and civilians were treated as well as how sanitize their location was, are questions I will try to answer. Also, I will like to include some of most known causes of deaths during the Civil War and the types of diseases that soldiers would come in contact with. Include who was in charge of the hospitals during the war. I will also include information from letters and documents that the nurse and doctors wrote while the Civil War was going one and what kind of establishments were created and the kind of equipment they used in the hospital. Since the period of the Civil War was and is consider to be the start and growth of the medical industry it is important for me to find out why.
During the Civil War, they had to have many medicines, operations, and surgeries done to themselves or others in order to survive (Jenny Goellnitz, Paragraph 1). Some of these medicines we still use today. Medical technology and scientific knowledge have changed dramatically since the Civil War, but the basic principles of military health care remain the same. The deadliest thing that faced the Civil War soldier was disease. For every soldier who died in battle, two died from disease.
The Civil War began because of uncompromising differences between free and slave states over the power of government, in April 12, 1861. Most people died in the Civil War because of deadly diseases. The Battle of Gettysburg is considered the most important event in the Civil War. Soldiers fought from July first to July third 1863. Do soldiers really know how to treat an injury during a war? In the book The Killer Angels by Michael Shaara’s published in 1974, we are exposed to historical figures that could have treated their injuries and made them minor if they had modern medicine. With the medical training we have today the figures could have saved their limbs and known how to take better care of themselves in such uncomfortable situations.
They didn’t know about germs or anything like that. All they knew was that people were getting sick and dying, about 2/3 of people died from disease (civilwar.org). They didn’t even keep hospital reports until later in the war. Probably the most important nurse in this time was Clara Barton, she was also known as an angel. For instance she was the founder of the American Red Cross in 1881. She was the one who also wanted to clean up the horrible, terrible mess of the hospital (civilwar.org). Example they started to clean themselves and their equipment more often. Also they cleaned up the limb pile, and they started to keep records of their patients’ and what they did to them. Lastly they started to give their patients’ clean bandages and they gave them more water. Giving them more water just helped them stay more hydrated thus making them heal faster. There were three categories of wounded soldiers. There was mortally wounded, slightly wounded, and surgical case (civilwar.org). For instance if they got hurt on the battlefield they wound be given whiskey to help sooth the pain. Well at least until they got to a hospital. The Union army could get to the hospital by horseback or train, while the Confederate army only had horseback. For the Union army there was about 10,000 doctors, while for the Confederate army there was about 4,000. They treated about 10,000,000 people during the civil war (pacivilwar150.com). Their assistants were the ones who gave them their equipment, and they were the ones who had the chloroform. One of the military hospitals were called Fairfax Seminary and it housed over 1,700 sick and wounded soldiers right when it opened
Soldiers were faced with "Fiery hunks of metal defaced, decapitated and eviscerated."(need to footnote #3) They believed doctors "were meat cutters..."who acted like meat cutters."(need to footnote 3) This was an outlook they had because of their quick will to cut off any part of the body to save a life rather risk infection and death. For example, "Three of every four surgical procedures performed during the war were amputations. Each amputation took about 2 to 10 minutes to complete. There were 175,000 extremity wounds to Union soldiers, and about 30,000 of these underwent amputation with a 26.3% mortality."5 They used such tools as large rusty like
The medicine in Civil War was just becoming extremely primitive. Surgeons, doctors, etc never understood that there could be infections and they did very little to prevent these infections from happening. Dover’s Powder was a mixture of ipecac and opium and was not only used to treat pain but also treat severe diarrhea, pneumonia, and bronchitis. Quinine was to treat common deadly diseases and was another common drug at the time that was used to cure diseases such as malaria. Calomel. Hospitals were generally warehouses, churches, barns, or other buildings, but were rarely cleaned at all. The disease that were the soldiers greatest enemy were, Dysentery, Measles, Smallpox, Pneumonia, and
The Civil War was fought with much carnage, and was one of America’s most ‘uncivilized’, wars with a soldier’s chance of survival about twenty-five per cent. While many were killed by other soldiers, usually through bullets, a large portion died as a result of disease such as: dysentery, mumps, pneumonia, typhoid fever, measles, and tuberculosis, diseases that are curable today. These diseases were spread through the horribly sanitized camps found on both sides of the war: Confederate and Union. And while many died from disease, some died from other soldiers’ bullets; these deaths may have been prevented if the technology, or overall techniques used by surgeons, during this time period were more up-to-date, as amputations were the main procedure
Many soldiers once wounded were on a down slope from there but once the ambulance corps was created by Letterman the evacuation of wounded soldiers got easier and faster. Once a soldier was wounded, medical personnel on the battlefield bandaged the soldier as fast as they could, and gave him whiskey and morphine if necessary for the pain (Dixon). Anesthetics were more readily available than most people thought, they were not as affective or regulated as we have now today but this was the start of the use of them. The two most common kind of anesthetics they used in the Civil War was chloroform or ether. Chloroform is a colorless, volatile, liquid derivative of trichloromethane with and ether-like odor (Chloroform). The surgeons would place come on a cloth and press it over the soldier’s mouth until the soldier passed out (Goellnitz). Ether was used before chloroform but was used in the same way. Ether was highly flammable so chloroform was safer to use around candles and open flames as some surgeries would persist into the night. The major risk for chloroform was that if a patient suddenly breathed in too deeply, an overdose of chloroform could case the heart to stop killing the patient (Schroeder-Lein.) Anesthesia was used for much more than just surgery. Some wound cleaning and treatment, such as the use of bromine solution to
Although most people would not object to the idea that diseases played some sort of role in the Civil War, few truly realize the extent of their influence. As it was stated previously, diseases affected the Northern soldiers and the Southern soldiers in different ways and to different extents. Those differences will be examined later in this paper. There are some issues relating to diseases, however, that affected soldiers in general, not particularly one side of the war. Those factors will be observed here.
As we know during the civil war women's played a huge role that was remarkable.The stood up for their equal rights as the right to Vote and have a voice.This January there was a worldwide protest March held in Washington D.C that let the whole world speechless.
Only a small percent of a civil war soldiers time in the war was spent on the battlefield. Infact, a lot of their time was spent in the camps that they slept in. Although camp life was not as difficult as the battlefield it had hardships of its own that were hard to deal with in itself. Twice as many civil war soldiers died from disease than from bullets and artillery. It is estimated that anywhere from 400,00-500,000 died from diseases in their camps. Many soldiers died from freezing to death. During the winter months the weather would get extremely cold because they had either left their coat and shelter (dog tent) back on the road because they weighed too much to carry for the long distances.