I was just musing and somehow ‘‘civil war medicine’’ came to mind so I went to Google and Wikipedia and found more than I would want to know.
Then I got to thinking that persons of that era had medical problems that were not related to war. Perhaps most did not live long enough for most cancers and COPD but there must have been many cases of gall bladder, liver, etc. Where can we read about what the people of that era did with regard to these things?
Here’s the 1860 text “Clinical Lectures on the Principles and Practice of Medicine” in text and PDF
And here’s “Theraputics and Materia Medica”, also from 1860, which is a look at pharmacology.
http://books.google.com/books?id=pO9FzP6J0f4C&pg=PA33&source=gbs_toc_r&cad=4#v=onepage&q&f=false
If you want something for non-doctors, here’s the 1860 British book, “The Practical Housewife: A Complete Encyclopedia of Domestic Economy and Family Medicine Guide”, which will show you what a layperson might know.
IIRC, they used various mercury compounds to treat syphilis. These worked, in the sense that they decreased the effects of the syphilis, but at the cost of mercury poisoning.