I was recently watching a documentary about Gettysburg, and I was reminded of the sheer brutality of Civil War era medicine; I find it amazing that this was only 150 years ago.
Basically, the doctors specialized in speed of purpose, and their remedy for any war wound seemed to be - “chop it off.”. Limbs were amputated on all of the injured soldiers, and, IIRC, a skilled doctor could remove a limb in 12 minutes. Anesthesia was in its infancy.
No concern was taken for hygiene. Doctors didn’t even clean their instruments (and I use that term loosely - it was a hacksaw) between patients!
Since I’m sure that my understanding of medicine during this time is a gross oversimplification of the subject, I assume that some innovations or advances in modern medicine came out of this “quackery”. What were they?
Oh, there were TONS of advances in medicine, specifically hygiene, training and nursing, during that time! No, really!
Thing is, you’ve got to compare it to what came before, not what we have today.
The “hack off one leg and use the same dirty saw on the next patient” was, indeed, the standard of care at the beginning of the war, but by the end, 75% of amputations were done cleanly and quickly, using anesthetics and techniques to minimize blood loss. The very act of systematically training surgeons to do that was revolutionary.
And, of course, as a nurse, I’m very glad that The Civil War saw the rise of women in nursing, and in excellent (for the day) nursing schools and rising prestige for nurses - who were previously considered little more than whores with bandages.
Indeed. Anesthesia was well known before the Civil War and widely used. When it wasn’t, it was more a problem of time than know-how.
Speaking of #6 on that list, Surgical techniques improved dramatically during the Civil War. I consider it the father of modern surgery, in fact! Before that time, a physician was likely unfamiliar with the scalpel. But during the war, physicians by the thousands learned the trade the hard way. Not the idea situation for the patient, mind, but it did introduce American medical practice to the concept, and they did well enough in such a trial by fire.
Battlefield medicine required speed, when many patients were waiting to be treated. Most civilian hospitals and doctors would not see huge influxes of patients like that and would have more time to devote to their patients.
The rigors of transportation in unsprung carts must have killed many soldiers by the time that they got to the hospital.
This was a particular source of horror late in the war. Historian Bruce Catton writes very movingly of the travails of the wounded produced by Grant’s “Forty Days” campaign. The huge column of ambulances from the Wilderness battle began an agonizing journey back to already-war-damaged Fredericksburg over roads so bad that some of them were “corduroyed” (using rounded, not flattened, logs as the road surface). The wounded were often turned on their sides and packed in like sardines to get them all in the wagons, which had no shock absorbers.
The first warning anyone in the town had was when seven thousand wounded men arrived at 1:00 AM without any prior warning.
And they kept coming. The ambulances from Spotsylvania started the journey before the ambulances from the Wilderness had even arrived. And on and on, from battle after battle, a continuous column of agony poured into the tiny town which was totally unprepared to deal with them.
