Pneumonia During The Civil War Essay

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During the Civil War one would be more likely to die in a hospital than the front line. due to how unsanitary and unsafe medical treatment was at the time. There are many ways to get sent to the hospital such as disease, war wounds, and/or infections. However, the treatment was often times worse then what sent you to the hospital. This was a great learning experience to future treatment in the medical field.
Many of the diseases in the Civil War are easily cured now, such as dysentery and pneumonia. Dysentery is inflammation of the intestine and severe diarrhea. Pneumonia is often cured on its own by the body in two to three weeks, but in war conditions is got worse instead of better. A more serious illness is the sexually transmitted disease syphilis. They did not know how to cure it or stop it from spreading from person to person. Syphilis was often spread around quite frequently in this time.
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The ones that did had much better survival rates. They used new products such as anesthetic and some forms of sanitation. Also the use of medical records was accumulating, which slowed down the number of bad practices. Walt Whitman got the word out saying “ seeing a heaping pile of legs, arms, and body parts to fill up a one horse cart outside the hospital”.
There were some changes and advancements in medical tools. Most of the tools used during civil war times are still in hospitals today. Some of these things are scissors, gauze, and needles. One of the doctor's favorite tools of the time was the bone saw. This was used to amputate limbs that were to wounded or infected. Now we use the scalpel for incisions for surgery. We do not amputate nearly as often today. The hospital was a more dangerous and deadly place than the front line of the civil war due to how unsanitary and unsafe medical practices were. This was one of the biggest medical learning
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