Surgical Improvements from World War One Essay

During any war, medical advancements are commonly made in response to the atrocities that take place during these bloody and gruesome times. World War II is no exception. During World War II, medical advances simply had to be made to keep soldiers alive. With all the victims of bullet wounds and diseases spreading around, treatments had to be invented or advanced. I chose this topic because science and medicine is very fascinating to me and I want to become a doctor when I grow up. During the war, penicillin, sulfanilamide, atabrine, plasma, and morphine were used in abundance and saved a countless number of lives.

When a soldier got an infection from an amputation, the over crowdedness of the camps made it so the disease traveled very quickly to the rest of the soldiers causing even more than one casualty. When the soldiers were traveling, they met extremes of cold or of heat. The different climates that the soldiers were exposed to made it so the soldiers more vulnerable to different diseases. The doctor’s sanitary situation while performing procedures was appalling. The unclean water used in procedures made the soldiers even more susceptible to diseases and infections.

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.

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, 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.

This allows the soldiers to apply pressure without having someone else to assist them. The tourniquets could only be used on wounds that occur on the arms or legs. Fibrin bandages are now used to decrease the loss of blood and the number of deaths. The treatment for a damaged limb at times, for some soldiers, was to amputate at an earlier time because it could later result in a good outcome. Anesthesia was created to prevent a lot of people from suffering pain during the operation. Military and civilian anesthesiology has connections in the treatment of trauma for critical care medicine. A vaccine was created to prevent Smallpox, it helps your body develop an immunity towards

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

World War Two, a harsh period of time in the 1930s-1940s, filled with controversial arguments, political battles, fights to the death, but most importantly, medical advancements. Did you know that without the research and discoveries made during World War Two, our medical programs would probably be lacking the information we have today? It’s very true, and in my opinion, the war strengthened our medical abilities, and it really put our world to the test. New medicine had been discovered, while old medicine had been improved; horrible medical experiments performed by the Nazis occurred during this time; but most importantly, World War Two has affected our medical programs that we have presently. These

All over the world, with every new war breaking out, new medical innovations came with it. With each fatal injury incurred on soldiers it was up to surgeons to come up with effective solutions. According to most experts at the time of WW11 stopping the bleeding was in quote "the most vital step" to buy time for the soldier to recuperate and survive, better limb amputation methods led to significantly decreased deaths because of shock or bleeding out. Even today, in specific times in particular during the Afghan war, American medics brought into life new clotting agents that gave the injured more time to get full treatment at a hospital. Another tool that at first was frowned upon by medics

Medical care was as scarce as clean water. Basic medical care was rudimentary. Describing the situations as “incredibly unhygienic” would be an understatement. War fatalities were the immediate effects of the Great War and the incredible spread of a disease was a later one. As a matter of fact, more people died from the Great Influenza Pandemic than from World War One (Tauenberger1).

Whenever there was a casualty on the battlefield, the injured soldier was removed using a combination of stretchers, horses, carts, and people. If the casualty wasn’t very serious or life-threatening, the wounded soldier would be treated right there, by nurses and doctors. However, if the injury was very serious or life-threatening, that badly injured soldier would be put on an ambulance and be transported the the most nearby

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

First let’s talk about the medical staff. Some medical staff people were nicknamed butchers. Most of the medical staff have never did a surgery on anybody before. Some of the soldiers they worked on died. Some soldiers did their own surgery.

During my tour I viewed three rooms and the herb garden of the small hospital. One room specifically called the “mourning room” is where soldiers just rested until there death. Another room housed six to eight beds were soldiers rested while they recovered from there surgery. At this time period germ theory or anesthesia had not been developed yet so survival after surgery was risky. Most hospitals had a 30% – 40% survival rate but the Spanish military hospital had a 60% - 70% survival rate based on their Spanish tactics. For example when dressing the wound the Spanish used a lynch mixture made out of cotton and corn flour. This form of wound dressing was more efficient and cleaner than other wound dressings during this period. Also the Spanish changed

“Every war stimulates medical research. It’s sad, but true" (Freemon). World War I advanced surgery to an unprecedented level through new discoveries and treatments. However, it was a struggle to fix the horrible injuries sustained by soldiers. Many soldiers died during attempts at reconstructive surgery, amputations, and other experimenting in the surgical field, yet these experimentations improved conditions and advanced medicine. During this time, surgery was becoming more successful by leaps and bounds, attempting to overcome problems that killed soldiers, like infection and gangrene, with new inventions in the field, like transfusions and asepsis. This war, in the history of surgery, was important enough to be repeated in the