Audrey+K.-Civil+War+Medicine

=__ Civil War Medicine __=

= Diseases: = toc The greatest cause of death in the Civil War was disease. Doctors and nurses did not know how to treat the diseases or how to prevent them. For every soldier that died in battle, two died from a disease. Intestinal problems such as dysentery and diarrhea also claimed many lives. Diarrhea and dysentery actually killed more men than battle wounds. Soldiers from the Civil War had dealt with outbreaks of:
 * Measles
 * Small pox
 * Malaria
 * Pneumonia
 * Camp itch.

Malaria was caused by mosquito's and camp itch was caused by insects or a skin disease. The most common reasons for all of these diseases were from inadequate physical examination of the recruits, ignorance, the rural origin of the soldiers, the neglect of camp hygiene, insects and vermin, exposure, lack of clothing and shoes, and poor food and water. The environment the soldiers lived in had a great impact on them and their health.

= Surgery: =

Surgery on the battlefields of the Civil War was primitive at its best, and chaos at its worst. Doctors were forced to commandeer houses, churches, schools, or even barns for use as temporary operating rooms. Field hospitals could be only a mile behind the actual front lines of the battle, and were marked by the Union Army with a simple yellow flag with a green "H" after 1862. The conditions in the field hospitals were septic. Doctors and surgeons worked frantically to keep up after bloody battles, creating a pile of severed limbs four or five feet high in a night's work. A capable surgeon could amputate a limb in under ten minutes, without washing hands or instruments for a lack of water and time. Surgeons used their bloody fingers as probes and bloody, uncleaned knives as scalpels. Doctors operated in bloody, pus-stained coats, before the invention of any antiseptics or disinfectants. Cases of blood poisoning, sepsis, and pyemia (pus in the blood) were common and general. Disease and infections were rampant. One observer described the patients as "screaming victims", adding that the surgeons, "stripped to the waist and bespattered with blood, stood around, some holding the poor fellows while others, armed with long, bloody knives and saws, cut and sawed away with frightful rapidity, throwing the mangled limbs on a pile nearby as soon as removed". Luckily for the soldiers, anesthesia was an old invention from 1846, and was a staple of the war hospital. Chloroform was the most common anesthetic by far, and the mortality rate from anesthesia was below one percent. Anesthesia was typically administered with the "open-drop" technique, in which the anesthetic was  applied to a cloth held over a patient's nose and mouth and removed after they became unconscious.

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= Causes of Injuries: =

Disease was just one of the reasons for deaths in battle. Soldiers also had to face great perils. The Civil War was harsh and bloody and more men were killed in the Civil War than in all previous American Wars combined. A reason for many of these casualties was that the Civil War was the first American War where rifled barrels were used. The rifled barrel increased the range at which you could hit a target, therefore, causing more deaths.

The armies (especially the Union Army) continued to use Napoleonic battle tactics. These tactics involved sending large forces of infantry against entrenched opponents. The relative inaccuracy of the smoothbore muskets gave the advancing infantry a good shot at reaching the enemies’ trenches and then lead to hand-to-hand combat. The pinpoint accuracy of the new rifled muskets, however, would allow the entrenched combatants to begin to thin the ranks of the advancing infantry at a huge range. Then they would eliminate them before they could reach the entrenchments. The commanders failed to realize this fact and didn’t have the advancements in artillery so it let to untold casualties and carnage in the Civil War.

= Medicine/Treatments: =

During the Civil War, medical knowledge was not as well known as it is nowadays. Doctors and nurses didn’t understand how to treat infections as well and it was a time before antiseptics and the specifics in surgery. Antibiotics were not available, minor wounds could easily become infected, so, many would be too injured to fight or they would die.

In order to handle these conditions in the camps from the resulting diseases, the Sanitary Commission was formed. The Sanitary Commission tried to educate the army on proper sanitation to keep disease from spreading. The sanitary commission report issued in 1861 were increased and included guidelines to improve the sanitation to reduce diseases.

For diseases, doctors used many methods for cures. For bowel complaints, open bowels were treated with a plug of opium. Closed bowels were treated with a mixture of mercury and chalk known as, “blue mass.” When dealing with scurvy, doctors prescribed green vegetables. Respiratory problems such as pneumonia and bronchitis were treated with dosing of opium or sometimes quinine and muster plasters. Bleeding was also used sometimes. Camp itch was dealt with by ridding the body of the pests or with poke-root solution. Whiskey and other forms of alcohol were also used to treat wounds and diseases even though it was questionable of how this helped, the whiskey did relieve some pain.

Most medicines were manufactured in the North where as Southerners had to run the Union blockade in order to gain access to them. On occasion, vital medicines were smuggled into the South, sewn into the petticoats of ladies sympathetic to the South’s problems. The South also had some manufacturing abilities and worked with herbal remedies. But, many of the Southern medical supplies came from captured Union stores. Dr. Hunter McGuire, the medical director of Jackson’s corps, commented after the War on the safeness of anesthesia, claiming that in part of the Confederacy’s good record was due in part of the supplies requisitioned from the North.

= Amputation: =

Soldiers with serious injuries in the torso would die but for those who were shot in an extremity, there was the answer of amputation. Amputation is the removal of a body extremity through trauma or surgery. It is used to control pain or a disease process in an infected limb such as gangrene. Below is an example of an amputation kit used in the war.



Here is an account of Battlefield medicine on the July 12, 1862 edition of Harper’s Weekly which is presented in the excerpt here:

//<span style="background-color: #e8e0d0; color: #000000; font-family: Garamond; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">**The Surgeon At Work in the Field** // //<span style="background-color: #e8e0d0; color: #000000; font-family: Garamond; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">The “Surgeon at Work" introduces us to the most painful scene on the battle-field. Away in the rear, under the green flag, which is always respected among civilized soldiers, the surgeon and his assistants receive the poor wounded soldiers, and swiftly minister to their needs. Arteries are tied, ligatures and tourniquets applied, flesh wounds hastily dressed, broken limbs set, and sometimes, where haste is essential, amputations performed within sight and sound of the cannon. Of all officers the surgeon is often the one who requires most nerve and most courage. The swaying tide of battle frequently makes him a prisoner, and sometimes brutal soldiers will take a flying shot at him as they pass. Upon his coolness and judgment depend the lives of a large proportion of the wounded; and if they fall into he enemy's hands, military rule requires that he should accompany them as a prisoner. An arrangement has lately been made between General Howell Cobb, of the rebel army, and Colonel Keys, of the army of the Potomac, by which surgeons are to be considered non-combatants and released from custody as soon as their wounded are in the hands of the surgeons of the enemy. //

<span style="background-color: transparent; color: #000000; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: justify; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">Amputation was the most common surgery performed during the Civil War. For every 4 operations, 3 were amputations. Usually when a soldier was struck in an appendage by a Minie Ball, it could have hit the bone where the bone would splinter. It would usually carry skin and dirty into the wound so the surgeon’s only solution was amputation. <span style="background-color: transparent; color: #000000; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: justify; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">The survival rate for amputation done in the first 24 hours after an injury was actually very good with only 25% mortality. When amputation was done after the first 24 hours, the mortality rate doubled to 50%. Surgeons tried to ship patients through as quickly as possible. <span style="background-color: transparent; color: #000000; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: justify; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">The surgeon usually had an operating table with a couple of boards between barrels. The surgeon usually had a rag soaked with chloroform to use on the soldiers. This sort of operation today would be considered very dangerous. However, somehow, surgeons knew enough to remove the rag or sponge so only a few deaths resulted from chloroform poisoning. The following procedure was usually used by surgeons: <span style="background-color: transparent; color: #000000; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: justify; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">The surgeon would cut off the blood flow with a tourniquet. Then, he would take a scalpel and slice through the outlying tissue and flesh. After that, he would use a hacksaw-like tool called a capital saw to saw through the bone. It had replaceable blades. When the bone and flesh was sliced off, the surgeon would take silk sutures in the North and cotton sutures in the South and sew the arteries and veins together. The limb would then be dropped on a pile of limbs that grew throughout the day. The procedure would take about fifteen minutes. Through amputation, it saved more lives then it killed which is incredible considering the medical knowledge at the time.

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= =

= How These Treatments Affected Soldiers Long-Term: =

<span style="background-color: transparent; color: #000000; font-family: Arial; font-size: 110%; font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">A Civil War soldier’s chance of surviving the war was about one in four and in total, about 650,000 men died. If a soldier’s injuries were not severe enough to disqualify him from service, he was returned to the army. However, if the injuries prevented him from continuing in the army, he was discharged and sent home with the government’s thanks and a small pension. But, once a soldier had fought through the Civil War and lived, they will never be the same again. If they had one of their limbs amputated, it would never grow back so they had to live without an arm, a leg etc. Also, they're health would be extremely low due to the infections and lack of hygiene they would have had to deal with.



=Bibliography:=

**Websites:**

"Amputations." //My.lambeautele.com//. Web. 15 May 2011. <http://www.powerweb.net/bbock/war/amputate.html>.

"Civil War Medicine." //The Civil War//. Son Of the South, 2003. Web. 04 May 2011. <http://www.sonofthesouth.net/leefoundation/civil-war-medicine.htm>.

Goellnitz, Jenny. "EHistory.com - Medicine: An Overview of Medicine." //EHistory at OSU | Welcome to EHistory//. OSU Department of History, 2011. Web. 04 May 2011. <http://ehistory.osu.edu/uscw/features/medicine/cwsurgeon/introduction.cfm>.

"Health the Medicine." //American Women//. The Library of Congress. Web. 4 May 2011. <http://memory.loc.gov/ammem/awhhtml/awmss5/science_med.html>.

**Pictures:**

http://www.google.com/imgres?imgurl=http://www.sonofthesouth.net/leefoundation/civil-war-surgeon.jpg&imgrefurl=http://www.sonofthesouth.net/leefoundation/civil-war-medicine.htm&usg=__ZZa_fZFIzZMtqTrOFsGQwcNQyss=&h=436&w=650&sz=109&hl=en&start=0&sig2=dmwG4jwtvg7Mnl5tQnWUOQ&zoom=1&tbnid=7VxB-dXXsFXIJM:&tbnh=157&tbnw=209&ei=c0XBTZncDYqXtweY-aTHBQ&prev=/search%3Fq%3Dcivil%2Bwar%2Bdiseases%26hl%3Den%26biw%3D1680%26bih%3D823%26gbv%3D2%26tbm%3Disch&itbs=1&iact=hc&vpx=136&vpy=141&dur=950&hovh=184&hovw=274&tx=166&ty=104&page=1&ndsp=32&ved=1t:429,r:0,s:0

http://www.clarke.public.lib.ga.us/pathfinders/civilwar/civilwarmedicine.html

http://www.sonofthesouth.net/leefoundation/civil-war-medicine.htm

**Notes:**

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