General Information
- The Civil War took place between 1861 and 1865 and was fought between the Union from the northern states and the Confederacy of the south. During the War approximately 760,000 soldiers lost their lives, surprisingly a majority of the deaths were due to disease rather than battlefield injuries. For every soldier who died on the battlefield, two died from a disease. Many of the disease soldiers caught are preventable or almost irrelevant in todays age, but it was a lack of knowledge which led to the mass casualties from these illnesses. Dysentery wasThe idea of germ theory was on the brink of a breakthrough but had not yet been developed during the war. This led to unhygienic practices by doctors and surgeons which allowed for the spread of disease to be rapid and overwhelming. Doctors and surgeons would simply go from patient to patient without cleaning their tools, only helping the spread of disease throughout the camps. In fact dysentery, a easily treatable and preventable disease in todays world, killed around 100,000 soldiers during the span of the war.
- When Soldiers were injured on the battlefield, doctors were left with a limited number of treatment options. A shot or wound to the belly or abdomen almost always led to death and these patients would be treated last. However a bullet to an extremity usually led to amputation. During the war anesthetics were used when performing an amputation on a patient. The preferred anesthetic was chloroform but anything from opium, morphine, and ether was used. Anesthesia was a relatively new medical discovery, so it is surprising that only .4% of patients died when given it. Next a surgeon would use a saw to remove the injured extremity from the patient, then proceed to bandage the limb. A skilled surgeon would be able to complete this process in approximately ten minutes. Afterwards a soldier would have to survive the possibility of infection and illness. Even with the poor hygienic standards about 75% of all amputations were successful and the patients carried on to live past the war.
There were approximately 14,000 doctors who served during the war, 10,000 for the Union and 4,000 for the Confederacy. These doctors were undertrained and ill prepared for such a large scale catastrophe, and offered minimal help. They were unable to prevent the spread of disease throughout camps, and were also ineffective in treating the diseases once they had spread. Many doctors also had no surgical experience, and were forced to learn on the job when it came to surgery. However the war became a learning experience and many changes were implemented to ensure better effectiveness for future wars to come.