Medical And Surgical Treatment During The Revolutionary War

World War I was a war of innovation with new artillery and tactics, but also a deadly war in which approximately ten million soldiers died in or injuries sustained from battle. As injuries increased throughout the war, the need for medical assistance was constantly growing. Surgery is considered an art and like art, it evolved and new techniques were developed, making an injury that could kill someone survivable. For instance, in the Civil War most surgeons would immediately amputate and in World War I surgeons began trying much harder to save limbs. Blood transfusion allowed surgeons to reduce patient death from blood loss because of the ample supply of blood from fellow soldiers. Sanitation improvements led to fewer deaths from infection

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.

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 medical staff were big heroes in the war. Amputation was the most common type of surgery during the civil war. The surgeons were known as “butchers.” Over the course of the war, the federal army did about 30,000 amputations. However if soldiers were shot in the head, chest, or stomach, the surgeons didn't even bother with them because it was very likely they would die.

Even though the techniques Buck and his team used in the surgery’s were the same as described in 1000BC he was the only one in the Civil War that knew this type of procedure (Rhode). The techniques Buck used made gradual repairs over the course of several operations (Rowe). He pioneered the use of tiny sutures to minimize scarring (Rowe). Amputation was also a procedure used during the Civil War that differs from modern medicine. The old battlefield technique of trying to save limbs with doses of TLC quickly fell out of favor during the Civil War in favor of just chopping the limb off (Rowe). Although it was cumbersome and brutal, amputation saved more life’s than any other wartime medical procedure (Rowe). The reason why it saved more life’s is because battlefield surgeons took no more than 6 minutes to get an individual on the operating table, apply a cloth soaked in chloroform or ether, and then quickly be able make the deep incision (Rowe). Even though amputations were labor intensive and seemingly very harsh, there was an drastic increase in the need for them due to the fact that military weapons became more advanced during the course of the Civil War

studying medical at the time need to learn about a variety of treatments for gunshots, cannon wounds, extreme bleeding, and removing arrows.

In conclusion, being a doctor in the Civil War was really tough because you had to deal with all of these super complex injuries that you didn't really have enough knowledge and technology to treat it correctly so it won't get infected and you avoid amputations more

World War Two was a massive war that occurred from 1939-1945, this war is known as the most violent war in the history of mankind spanning across many countries who were affected immensely. This war has had a great impact on our knowledge and there were many political, social and military implications of the war. During this time period, American life evolved from temporary changes to long term changes in various fields. World War Two brought about major expansion in medicine and nursing. More treatments were needed to heal wounds and infections on the battlefield. Also, researchers and medical experts helped to create new drugs. World War Two lasted around six years and during this time the army nurse corps was a great support. Although war naturally produces casualties resulting in medical and nursing advancements, World War Two had profound impact in the fields of medicine and nursing.

To obtain a medical degree during the Civil War, one only had to apprentice with a local physician, received practically no clinical experience, and they just had to take a few courses at a proprietary medical college. Amputations were the most common surgeries performed during the Civil War. An amputation consisted of the removal of a person's arm or leg due to infection or severe injury. Military surgeons learned to amputate and perform a wide variety of procedures as they were actively engaged in conflicts. Most Civil War surgeons had never even treated a gunshot wound or even performed a surgery. Due to the lack of education, nurses would volunteer to be present during surgeries even though they knew very little about what was going on. Working against incredible odds, however, the medical corps increased in size, improved its techniques, and began to gain a better understanding of medicine and disease every

Imagine being a surgeon, you have to stay in cramped room with everyone watching you take out a tumor. Can you handle that amount of pressure? In the Civil War surgeons actually didn't have the tools to amputate the injury, so they had to saw off the leg.There are many types of surgery on specific body parts like for example heart surgery, brain surgery, and even plastic surgery.

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 outcome of these patients is dramatically influenced by the quality of the treatment in the first hours after the trauma, and in particular the very frequent concomitant systemic factors of aggravation, which arterial hypotension and hypoxia, in addition to the delay in diagnosis of surgical wounds. In the last few decades have made ​​considerable progress in

According to Naimer (2014), acute hemorrhage occurs in 50 % of the battlefield death and 30% of causality who died from excess bleeding. The use of tourniquets is an effective means of arresting life-threatening external hemorrhage from a limb injury. The first reported use of a tourniquet was a French army surgeon called Etienne Morel in 1674. Thus, the word tourniquet originated from French word call “toner” meaning to turn. A tourniquet is a constricting or compressing device use as a bandage to control venous and arterial circulation to an extremity for a period. Pressure is applied circumferentially to the skin and underlying tissues of a limb. Thus this weight is transferred to the walls of the vessels,

The use of a tourniquet is an effective means of arresting life-threatening external hemorrhage from a limb injury. The use of tourniquets has been documented in the annals of historical medicine as far back as 6th century BC. “The Hippocratic body of work mentions in passing tight bandaging and distal limb gangrene without noting hemorrhage control, probably because hemorrhage and death, although linked empirically, were not linked philosophically by the ancient Greeks. (Kragh, Swan, Smith, Mabry, & Blackbourne, 2012, para. 6)” The first reported use of a battlefield tourniquet was by French army surgeon, Etienne Morel in 1674 (Welling, McKay, Rasmussen, & Rich, 2011). The device included a belt that went through a wood block (with a hole at each end), and a stick was used in the loop of the belt around the limb to twist as a windlass; this was known as a block tourniquet. The actual word tourniquet originated from the French word toner, meaning to turn.

There was a lack of medicine, credibility, and knowledge in areas of the medical field. Hospitals would be set up wherever there was a spare building or shack. Due to this, there was a lack in hygiene and staff fell short with all the horrendous injuries the soldiers needed tended to. Soldiers often experienced trench foot, which was caused by standing in the trenches too long, causing them to lose circulation to their feet. Another common illness that spread to soldier to soldier was trench fever. This fever was caused by body lice that made home in the trenches, and the symptoms ranged from fevers, muscle soreness, migraines, and blisters on the body. A common procedure to help infected areas on the soldiers was amputation. Throughout “The Sojourn,” these diseases and depictions of medical aid are shown a lot in the novel. Josef, after being shot in the hand and captured by the enemy, was sent to the doctors before being put into a prisoner of war camp, and due to the state of his had, it had to be amputated. He rested in the hospital for a couple days until it healed and the danger of infection was gone. At the makeshift hospital, Josef saw nurses covered in blood with buckets of body parts, dirty tools, and dead men lining the ground. The link to deaths and hospitals with poor hygiene were not just depictions in the novel, but based off of true events that thousands of soldiers went