Civil War Sanitation

How were injured soldiers treated during the circus war? How does our medical treatments now compare to how they were treated before? Did the way injured soldiers were treated have to do with the cause of their death? Wounds were treated very differently to how they’re treated now and it always makes people wonder how people still survived and were able to live longer. It all reflects on technology, transportation, antiseptic practices, and surgical techniques. Throughout war and history more soldiers died from diseases than they did from injuries and often the medical treatments they would get for their injuries wouldn’t make them better but worse and it was what caused more deaths.

Even though there was not any sanitation the chance of survival for stretched then pervious wars. Doctors had medical kits, which included different tool for cutting such as knives, scalpels, bone saws, chain saw, suture and bandages. Thermometers were rarely used. Doctors did have some painkillers, but they were not always given to all soldiers. The most effective were morphine and opium. What happened after the surgery? Soldiers were transported to a hospital by ambulance. Soldiers were normally in horrible pain making the trip almost unbearable to deal with. The greatest risks for soldiers were now infection.

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.

During the Civil War the only major problem second to getting shot in the face, was a shot to the chest. At the time doctors did not really understand how to treat a wound of that type, and usually the major issue was the negative pressure exerted outwards, leading to the collapse of the lungs and soon after, suffocation. Contributing to this problem, the doctors observed that during their war, the french had an 8 percent survival rate from major damage to the chest, leading to many medical practitioners to simply refuse treating chest wounds. Early into the war, however, soldiers would be blessed with the miracle of knowledge, knowledge of how to close chest wounds. Benjamin Howard, a young assistant surgeon, otherwise known as a cub surgeon,

The Civil war is known to be the bloodiest American War, one that has tainted our history forever and is so significant that is taught to young children. The war had started with the whole conflict on how slavery should be handled with, leading to a bunch of arguments up in the North and the South. Until the south had said “Enough!” and decided to make its separate government for they had no longer agreed to the constitution and government, this is how the war had started. This war was about whether the south should be able to separate from the Union, it was only until the Emancipation Proclamation that everything had changed. That is when finally, when President Abraham Lincoln had decided to make the war about slavery. He made it all about

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.

In the Battle of Gettysburg that took place on July 1, 1863, and ended on July 3, many casualties and injuries resulted from the fighting between those few days, leading to the victory of the Union Army. As mentioned in the Killer Angels, the hospitals were tents where soldiers were treated for their wounds on the battlefield, in the view of anyone and everyone. Amputations were almost every physician’s immediate response to bullet wounds shattering bones, amongst other types of injuries. Medicine was not as advanced back then as it is now, especially in the battlefield. Often, physicians and other medical professionals did not use proper hygienic techniques, which led to further complications due to bacteria and

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

In 1864, there were many bloody casualties that occurred. Out of 11,000 physicians that worked in the war, only 500 of them had done surgery before the war had taken place. About 70% of the men they took care of had very extreme wounds.

Many soldiers became ill, their immune systems weakened and the presence of contagious disease meant that many men were in hospital for sickness, not wounds. Doctors were instructed to be vigilant in cases of ‘malingering’, where soldiers pretended to be ill or wounded themselves so that they did not have to fight. The object of the treatment was to get the men back to the trenches as quickly as possible, or to ensure that they were ‘invalided out’ as fit as possible and would therefore only require a small pension, so that they did not cost their country a lot of money. The First World War changed the ways that soldiers were cared for when they were wounded. New technologies including blood transfusion, control of infection, and improved surgery

The field surgeon became regarded as an amputation specialist. He must remove any damaged limb that might allow infection to travel from the wound to the rest of the body. The intimations for the amputation were 1) all compound long bone fractures, 2) all bullet wounds to a joint and any fractures that entered the joint, uncontrolled bleeding, 3) irreparable lacerations of major blood vessels or nerves, crushed tissue and any foreign bodies that were too deep or too difficult to remove (Kuz 16). When it was decided that the soldier was to undergo surgery, the operations violated almost every method of infection prevention that we use today. When a wounded soldier was finally moved to a field hospital the wounded soldier would wait on the

We can be sure during World War I, many soldiers died from their infected wounds, nevertheless, during Warl War II, with the “development of the drug”, it helped reduce the overall number of amputations