Medical Care During The Civil War

Have you ever needed to have surgery? Have you or anyone you known needed an ambulance? Have you ever heard of a life saving blood transfusion? Have you ever gotten an X-Ray for a broken bone? If you answered yes to any of these then you have the Civil War and WWl to thank for creating these medical advances.

Over 5000 volunteer nurses’ north and south served in military hospitals during the Civil War. Nurses were of all sorts and came from all over. Women wanted to be involved in this national struggle in any way they could. They did not want to stay home and play their traditional domestic roles that social convention and minimal career opportunities had confined the majority of their sex to. Many women thought of nursing as an extension of their home duties, almost like taking care of “their boys.” They recall the Civil War as a time when their work as nurses made a difference. It gave them an opportunity to prove they had the ability and courage to help.

The Civil War was a time of great learning in the medical field. Without these advances, we would live in a completely different world. The question is though, would the same amount of medical supplies and knowledge in both the North or South have changed the eventual outcome of the Civil War? Similar circumstances in medicine would have only affected the mortality rates of both sides, not the outcome of the Civil War. Almost all odds were against the South from the very beginning. It was just a matter of time from the very start.

From 1861 to 1865, “between 2,000 to 5,000 women” volunteered to serve as nurses in military hospitals during the Civil War. Nurses from all over came to lend a hand during this devastating time. Clara Barton, Annie Etheridge, Dorothea Dix, Susie King Taylor, and Helen Gilson were just a few of the many nurses who volunteer their services to the war effort. Women wanted to be involved and help out as much as they could. Most women did not want to be at home - doing their traditional domestic work. Many women thought that helping out during the Civil War as nurses was an addition to doing their home duties. Women also believed that working as a nurse helping soldiers during the war would make a difference in how people viewed them. Being a

Where do you think the nursing profession came from? There were so many important voices and changes since the Civil War that had a major influence towards the nursing profession. Some things are the same but at the same time many things are different. For example, in the Civil War, if a soldier had a hurt leg or arm the doctors would just amputate it right away. Today doctors do many exams before they do something that serious. Since the Civil War, nursing has changed for the better due to the increase in education programs, the respect for a nurse 's role, and compensation.

Have you ever wondered what our Healthcare system was like in the 1800’s? Have you never wondered what they did to cure disease, treat broken bones, how society back then as a culture acted, and among other things why woman had been the main pioneer of this field? This is what my research topic consists of and below you’ll find my opinions and sources that I have used to come to the conclusion I have to illuminate the Healthcare system in the 1800’s.

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.

If you were a soldier in the Battle of Gettysburg do you think that you would’ve survived? The battle between the Union and the Confederacy lasted three days, from July 1, 1863 to July 3, 1863 and in the end the Union was victorious. The Battle of Gettysburg was the bloodiest battle of the Civil War. The medical knowledge and equipment that the surgeons had back then were no match the types of illnesses and injuries that the soldiers had. The people that were that got shot during the Civil War, either had to get a body part amputated, got their gunshot wound covered with a bandage, opened up the wound to get the bullet out and then patch them up. Three people from The Killer Angels that got shot and just got their wound wrapped with bandage were John Buford, Buster Kilrain, and a runaway slave.

The tragedies and hardships of the Civil War touch the lives of every citizen, including children. With many of the men away at war, women and children were left to fend for themselves through these hardships on the home front. Children of all races and circumstances experienced their share of struggles. Fear was a dominant emotion among Southern children, particularly the fear of invasions by the Union army. There was a constant threat of physical violence, death, and separation of family. Conscription and evacuations threatened to separate families. Raids resulted in physical violence, destruction of property, and theft. Even if there was no threat of physical harm, the war could interrupted day-to-day life through acts such as

Let’s go way back, all the way to 1861, the beginning of the Civil War. The Civil War was a battle between the Confederacy (south) and the Union (north). This was a battle to end slavery in the south. There were about 1,264,000 soldiers that died, and about 644,000 people were injured. As you may know, our medical field has drastically improved over the years since then. But back at that time, there wasn’t a lot that was yet to be known. As the Civil War progressed in its dreadful ways and occurrence of common wounds, that would be the main topic that will be addressed. Now sit back and relax, as we take a trip back to the past of battlefield medicine during the Civil War.

There was limited supply of medical equipment as a result they were using saws, scalpels, and knives to operate surgery in the field. It was long ago before the introduction of sterility of medical instrument and so the instrument became bridge of contamination of disease between soldiers. “Recalled on surgeon; ‘we operated in old blood-stained coats with infected hand” (Oates, 362). It was a head of discovery of antibiotic, wounds and scars could easily develop to infection and therefore limited their survival. Doctors and nurses were limited in number as well their distribution center around the battle. Soldiers were wounded so badly and doctors knew nothing except to devise amputations. They did all they can to alleviate the pain of the wounds by amputation but they were too surpassed by patients. There were no ambulances to carry victims to the medical centers nor had the doctors to see every patient with special

     When Walt Whitman wrote that he believed the “real war” would never get into the books, this is the side he was talking about (Belferman 1996). Yet, it is important that we remember and recall the medical side of the conflict too, as horrible and terrifying as it was (Adams 1952). Long before doctors and people knew anything about bacteria and what caused disease was the time of Civil War medicine. Doctors during the Civil War (always referred to as “surgeons”) were incredibly unprepared. Most surgeons had as little as two years of medical school because very few pursued further education. At that time, Harvard Medical School did not even own a single stethoscope or

The Civil War had lasting historical impacts on America. Many medical, technological, military advances happened during or after the war and are still impacting The United States today. According to civilwar.org, out of the “...the heavy and constant demands of the sick and wounded sped up the technological progression of medicine, wrenching American medical practices into the light of modernity.” (Dixon). This quote shows just how much the Civil War forced these advances. Many things that are normal to us today, came around during the Civil War. Jonathan Letterman, the Medical Director of the Army of the Potomac, gave us the idea of a modern day ambulance system. In Letterman’s system “the ambulances of a division moved together...with two stretcher-bearers...” (civilwarhome.com). These ambulances would gather wounded men from the field, and then dress their wounds on their way to the field hospital. Because of the Civil War and because of how many deaths came out of the Civil War, we are still using Jonathan Letterman’s system.

For medical practitioners in the field during the civil war, germ theory, clean medical practices, advanced equipment, and organized hospitalization systems were virtually unknown. In the battle fields it was better known to amputate the hurt body part than to get medical help from the hospital. During battle in 1864 a solider had his leg amputated. Many more men like him have given up their arm, leg, toe, or even their whole foot to save their life. Hospitals were crowded upstairs and downstairs. Battlefields were overcrowded with amputated feet, legs, and many dead bodies. Nurse Walt Whitman

It was during WWI that Alexander Fleming, the discoverer of penicillin, started his research with the Royal Army Medical Corps in London; “Disturbed by the high rate of death from infected wounds, Fleming began to question the effectiveness of treating dead or damaged tissue with certain antiseptics. In a series of ingenious experiments, he proved that the antiseptics then in use actually did more harm than good by killing the white cells of the immune system and thus making it easier for infection to develop” (Scientists: Their Lives and Works). A common case of infected wounds doctors had to deal with in WWI were shrapnel wounds, or foreign bodies which had been imbedded into soldiers flesh. The surgery created to deal with this was also important. Debridement was supposedly begun by a French medical officer called Dr. Riche, in 1914. This cleaner method not only removed the foreign bodies, but the surgeon would also cut out the skin that surrounded the ‘contused and infected wound’ to replace it with a ‘clean healthy incised wound’. This was possible only because of the new cleanliness in hospitals. Without antiseptics, bacteria wound have set into the open wounds much more often. The new idea was that a soldier; “to do all that he can to keep in good health is a duty that the soldier owes his country” (James Moss). Since the idea of bacteria and explaining disease through science, not religion, was new, many soldier