Wounded Casualties and Healthcare Treatment in the Civil War

1634 Words4 Pages
bulb-icon

Recommended: Civil war medicine conclusion

CW Research Paper

Since more people died from disease and infection than from injuries, the American Civil War’s new developments were important and helped change the face of the war for the better. The conditions and sanitation in the hospital tents were gruesome. There were people moaning in agony on the floor and blood everywhere. Poor sanitation led to diseases and sickness. Wounds wrapped in dirty bandages led to infections. Doctors didn’t understand germs and didn’t know how to treat them. Amputation was very popular. Surgeons would cut off limbs and hope that the patient didn’t die from blood loss or other infections. Doctors didn’t have antibiotics. They used anesthetics like chloroform and alcohol. Inventions like the evacuation, ambulance, and triage systems were important and saved many people. The Confederate Medical Department was formed and recruited doctors and nurses. They set rules to try and save lives. Doctors and nurses didn’t always have medical experience but they shared new ideas and improved methods. Despite its barbaric and brutal reputation, medical care during the Civil War helped dawn a new era of modern medicine for they developed a better understanding of sanitation, infection, and disease, found new anaesthetics and medications, and created ambulance, evacuation, and triage systems.

People during the Civil War didn’t understand the importance of proper sanitation so as a result, the conditions in most medical field hospitals were shamefully filthy and lead to disease and infections. Surgeons didn’t wash the bloody tables and thought that washing their tools and instruments was unimportant after amputations. The small areas in which large numbers of soldiers lived were an excellent breeding plac...

... middle of paper ...

...”). From that information, Doctors and nurses wrote medical procedure manuals as they learned, inventing protocol and demanding better. By 1863, every doctor in the Union had to take an exam, do an apprenticeship, and receive a standard set of supplies that included a kit with all of the tools needed to amputate and perform many medical tasks. In addition, every doctor received barrels for storing water for sanitary purposes (“A Turning Point”). There was better medical care than was ever seen before and eventually the care that was for soldiers was used in the general population.

Even though it had a bad reputation, medical care during the Civil War helped dawn a new era of modern medicine for they developed a better understanding of sanitation, infection, and disease, found new anaesthetics and medications, and created ambulance, evacuation, and triage systems.

Show More
Related

  • The Home Front Effect in The American Civil War

    970 Words  | 2 Pages

    The Civil War was unlike any other war ever fought in America and had many effects on the home front for both the North and the South. It is stated to be the first ever total war, which is a war against not only the civilians but also the armies. The Civil War is also considered the first modern war fought by the U.S. troops. Lincoln asked volunteers to sign up for only three months. Many people thought the war wouldn’t last long. However, the war continued on for four years. The Union armies had around 2,500,000 to 2,750,000 men and the Confederate army had approximately 750,000 to 1,250,000 men. The entire North and South society was affected by the war and desired for many social and economic assets. The Civil war brought new military techniques which caused the armaments to be more destructive. Ironclad ships and railroads were sufficiently used within the war. The north had a motive; they wanted to weaken the South’s longing to victory. The North tried to achieve this last motive by inflicting wholesale destruction upon the South (Janda, 1995). More than a hundred people seemed to be spies or secessionists in Maryland. In time, they were arrested due to not being faithful to the union and their state. Pro-secessionist newspapers were shut down, and telegrams and mail were censored (Perret, 2004).

    Read More

  • Amputation And Disability During World War One

    1033 Words  | 3 Pages

    If a soldier had an injured limb they appear to have had little choice but to have it amputat-ed. Use of the “Guillotine” technique left many soldiers with infections and additional prob-lems

    Read More

  • An Uncommon Soldier By Sarah Rosetta Wakeman

    764 Words  | 2 Pages

    Sarah Rosetta Wakeman's tale is not unusual. Wakeman was one of many who died from chronic diarrhea. Eventually dysentery would kill nearly half a million soldiers during the war. The Civil war was a terrible, bloody war, and many facts are still unknown or unconfirmed, Wakeman’s letters offer a rare glimpse into civil war life that is confirmed and accurate. This is true simply because her letters were written during her serving actively in the army, rather than a set of memoirs or stories compiled after the fact for publication purposes.

    Read More

  • Analysis: This Republic Of Suffering, Death And The American Civil War

    773 Words  | 2 Pages

    The American Civil War is one of the biggest turning points in American history. It marks a point of major separation in beliefs from the North and the South and yet somehow ends in a major unification that is now called the United States of America. It still to date remains the bloodiest war in American History. The book “This Republic of Suffering, death and the American Civil War” by Drew Gilpin Faust better explains the change in thought from the American people that developed from the unexpected mass loss in soldiers that devastated the American people. Throughout this review the reader will better understand the methods and theory of this book, the sources used, the main argument of the book, the major supporting arguments, and what the

    Read More

  • Civil War Diary Of Cyrus F. Boyd

    1155 Words  | 3 Pages

    The Civil War had a very large affect on all of the States. It changed men from gentlemen that went to church every Sunday and never cussed to people who rarely went to church and cussed all the time. Some of the people in the war were also very corrupt and did not do things as they should be done. The way that the enemy was looked at was even changed. All of these things were talked about in "The Civil War Diary of Cyrus F. Boyd".

    Read More

  • Comparison of Medical Care During The American Civil War and Medical Care During World War I

    1469 Words  | 3 Pages

    Lax, Eric. "On the Medical Front; Bleeding Blue and Gray Civil War Surgery and the Evolution

    Read More

  • Medicine in the Civil War

    893 Words  | 2 Pages

    Most people in the beginning of the war; thought it was only going to last a few weeks or months, so not much effort was put into recruiting doctors or surgeons. Even so, surgeons really didn’t have formal training in medicine. They did not know much about bacteriology and were ignorant of what caused diseases. Most Civil War surgeons also had never treated a gun shot wound or performed surgery, which led to the fact that they were not qualified at all. They would usually have 2 years of schooling, with only bookwork in the first year, and the second year would usually just be a repeat. However, doctors tried the best they could at treating the wounded and injured, and knowledge of medicine improved a little bit more each year.

    Read More

  • Gordon Grice The Black Widow Analysis

    541 Words  | 2 Pages

    Resection was a process that “involved cutting open the limb, sawing out the damaged bone, and then closing the incision” (Jones, 1). Resection allows the patient to keep his limbs but it requires a great ordeal of time and skill. This also contributed to the common practice of amputation during the war. But there were cases where surgeons did use this method. Terry J. Jones said in his NY Times article, “resections were used more frequently after surgeons learned that amputations had a much higher mortality rate” (Jones, 1). In another article by Corydon Ireland, it describes Mitchell Adam’s, a Harvard lecturer, grandfather who served as a volunteer surgeon during the Civil War. In the article, “Adams was not a champion of hasty amputations, but argued for excision and other limb-saving measures. And he describes the everyday pressures of a country practice in Framingham, Mass” (Ireland, 1). This meant that not all surgeons at the time only wanted to amputate but strived for alternate methods. This new knowledge shows that some surgeons were more dedicated to thinking about the well-being of their patients than others and this opens up to other possibilities that may have occurred during the war. This allows an image to come to mind of a surgeon diligently operating on a soldier with care and compassion. However, even though there may be many possibilities, we can’t truly know every event that occurs during a

    Read More

  • Artillery and Weapons of the Civil War

    1504 Words  | 4 Pages

    Every war, though happens for a reason and bring a better change, is often gruesome. The Civil War broke America in two groups and, at the time, was the war with the most casualties and injured men. As the fight to preserve the Union progressed, so did a number of other areas, such as weaponry and artillery. The advanced technology produced through the Civil War assisted in increasing number of casualties. The North was more fortuitous than the South in multitudinous ways. One of which includes the fact that their industrial society allowed them to produce a larger amount of weapons of a higher quality. One of the major reasons the Union triumphantly defeated the Confederate army was because of their more superior types of weapons.

    Read More

  • American Technological Advancements of the Civil War

    707 Words  | 2 Pages

    The Civil War had many large technological advancements that would greatly evolve warfare. The war introduced the first ironclad ships, the first repeating rifles and carbines, and the first metallic rifle and pistol cartridges. The military didn't solely rely on this new technology, however. Older weapons and other tools were still trusted, such as paper cartridges and smoothbore muskets.

    Read More

  • Civil War Medicine

    458 Words  | 1 Pages

    Still, another reason for disease being the greatest killer in the Civil War was the bad medical examinations of recruits. The recruiting process allowed underage, overage men and those in noticeably poor health to join the army on both sides. Two hundred thousand recruits originally accepted for services were told to be unfit and discharged, either because they had become ill or because a routine examination revealed their bad condition.

    Read More

  • The American Civil War

    575 Words  | 2 Pages

    Following the American Civil War, the whole nation was forever changed and was the result of many good and bad things. Although it was a very costly war and was So, the Civil War did define us and made us the good and the bad things we are and led to an extremely significant change because slavery was abolished once and for all and African American rights followed many years later, the Federal Government imposed more power over the states, our country was divided for a while, and it left the nation in debt due to the fact that we fought each other.

    Read More

  • Modern Day Embalming History

    1171 Words  | 3 Pages

    In modern day America, we unknowingly take countless things for granted on a daily basis. For example, we blatantly assume that privileges such as clean hospital rooms, trash services, and preservation have always been provided. In reality, at the time of the civil war, medical and hygienic methods were primitive compared to today’s technology in medicine. A significant difference was the process after death. Modern day embalming was created, as an innovative way to preserve the bodies of fallen soldiers, but has developed into a customary practice that accompanies contemporary mortality.

    Read More

  • Impact Of The Civil War On American History

    1141 Words  | 3 Pages

    The Civil War was an important war over the freedom of slaves in the U.S.. The Civil War is well known for being caused by the issue of slavery, but it is really a combination of different events and actions that caused tensions to rise throughout the country. The economic and political issues in the U.S., along with certain actions caused the Civil war, which is one of the United States’s worst wars. All in all, the Civil War was one of the most devastating wars for our country as a whole, and the process of rebuilding would take years and is no easy job.

    Read More

  • Analysis of The Evolution of Nursing

    1459 Words  | 3 Pages

    During the Civil War they really worked towards building more hospitals and it drove the nursing profession to grow and have a large demand for nurses, but they were more like volunteers, such as wives or mistresses who were following their soldier men. Being a war nursing at that time was seen as a job for the lower class and no “respectable” woman could be seen in a military hospital. During the Civil War Phoebe Levy Pember, a young widow, went north to the confederate capital of Richmond. She eventually ran the world’s largest hospital, where on an average day she would supervise the treatment of 15,000 patients who were cared for by nearly 300 slave women. The war then led to a greater respect for nurses which was noticed by Congress. They then passed a bill providing pensions to Civil War nurses, but more importantly this led to the profe...

    Read More

More about Wounded Casualties and Healthcare Treatment in the Civil War

Open Document