How Did Medicine Influence Amputations During The Civil War

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Imagine you're a young Union soldier during the Civil War, you just got shot in the collar bone by a musket ball. You were rushed to the field hospital for the amputation of your arm. The doctors quickly put you under and when you woke up your arm was gone and only 6 minutes had passed. Medical advancements during the Civil War shaped the way the medical world works today, the civil war influenced amputations, anesthesia and sanitation.

Amputations were the least advanced but yet most used medical procedure during the Civil War times, every 3/4 surgeries were amputations. Most procedures are performed in 2-10 minutes of time. Amputations occurred daily during the Civil War, most limb amputations were performed by doctors with little to no experience because of how easy they were to do. A lot of doctors have never even seen a bullet wound, let alone an amputated limb. Over 30,000 people underwent an amputation while serving in the War. When the amputations were performed, the farther away from the torso the cut was, the …show more content…
Doctors perform surgeries without gloves or any protective equipment. After a study found that infections were caused by unsanitary processes, doctors and nurses would soak their hands in chlorinated water but only, before or after seeing an infected patient. If a patient had an infection, there was a “70% chance of them dying”(Reilly). Most deaths in the civil war were because of the sanitation problem that caused people to get infections and catch diseases. The sanitation was so limited that soldiers would get amputated, survive but then die a week later because of infections or other illnesses that they caught because of unsanitary living conditions. Camps were overcrowded and filthy for the soldiers, soldiers would only wash their clothes once a week and bath only twice a
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