Surgery In The Civil War

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Before the advancement of medicine, during The Civil War, the Unionists and the confederates had faced many casualties due to disease and infection from injuries and the shortage of medical supplies. Many soldiers had faced unnecessary suffering due to the lack of medical knowledge and inexperienced doctors to deal with mass casualties. Doctors would have to use the limited amount of supplies that they had, and use what was around them to assist the injured. With the limited amount of space it created the risk for soldiers to obtain life threatening infections towards these injured soldiers. As the Civil War progressed new technologies and hands on experiences gained by the doctors had helped create new advancements in the medical field. Throughout …show more content…
Surgery was one of the most important procedures in the medical field.Surgery would affect many of the soldiers lives, by either creating a new and improved life for them, or creating a new and disastrous life for them. One of these reasons being because there was a great lack of knowledge and hands on experience with most of the surgeons. Becoming a surgeon and getting a medical degree was very easy: one had to apprentice with a local physical and take a few medical courses at a medical college. Most physicians had little surgical experience. Obviously this would cause many issues with surgeries, like one of the most common surgeries, amputations. Amputation was a necessity for the surgeons to know, because there would be many casualties, and there would be many men who were in need of amputation. The new surgeons who weren't experienced were eager to go into surgeries which often ruined the lives of many, killing, or destroying people’s limbs. This is why when people would think of amputations as a terrible thing, it was because the bad name these new surgeons gave it. Surgery was not easy for the doctors though, during surgery something we use now called anesthesia was not developed yet. As an alternative, whiskey was given to the patient, or a piece of cloth was placed in the patient's mouth to bite on as they were restrained …show more content…
One of the biggest problems within the medical field were the people who practiced medicine. Most of the physicians in war served as apprentices rather than attending medical school, meaning they lacked the experience needed to treat the many of casualties of war. The education for medicine was different in other countries from the US. For example, it was common in Europe to have about 4 years of medical school and lots of training to learn how to treat certains diseases and perform surgeries. However, in America many doctors had less than 2 years of medical training with little clinical experiences, which caused many problems. This was a problem for America because it would cause many problems for the injured soldiers in need of surgeries like amuations because they would catch postoperative infections that would often kill soldiers, and this would create a bad name for this type of surgery and make people hesitant to get the surgery. But General Hammond would soon change schooling for medicine. He would create new hospitals that! required a certain level of training to become a physician at the new hospitals, including hands on experiences because no matter how trained these men were they had to be prepared for anything, and none of the doctors would be prepared for the mass casualties that were soon to
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