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Essay On Medicine During The Civil War

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The civil war was a long hard fought battle that left many people injured and deceased. Throughout this war America started seeing a major need for doctors and medical personnel. Medicine was on high demand and the importance of the american doctors and nurses was very high. Medical technology was limited during the 19th century, but the doctors and nurses worked hard to expand their knowledge and learn more about treatments.
At the start of the civil war in 1861 there were less than 100 doctors (Fifer, “Health and Medicine During the Civil War”) and by the end there were around 11,000 Union doctors and 4,000 Confederate. Less than five percent of all Union doctors have ever performed a surgery before the start of the war, and the Civil War caretakers had just let go of old remedies such as, bloodletting, purging and blistering. The study of medicine was not a well known topic. (Dixon, “Civil War Medicine”) Doctors had to learn their jobs by doing, and treatment constantly an effort of trial and error to learn the ways of helping their patients. Care providers had never experienced these “bone shattering” injuries before the start of the Civil War. (Trammell, “Life is better than limb”)
Soldiers were often …show more content…

There were 30,000 amputations on Union soldiers and around 10,000 amputations on Confederate. The doctors decided that removing a limb was easier than watching a wound for infection. If a wound did become infected, amputation was always the solution so the infection did not spread. Doctors were given manuals on how to perform amputations. The manuals were full of pictures and a procedure that almost anyone could follow. Amputated body parts were thrown into big piles to be taken away. If a surgeon was fairly good they were able to perform an amputation in five to 10 minutes. Soldiers gave the surgeons and doctors the name “Butchers” because of how many amputations

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