Casual Peruser Of Civil War Medicine example essay topic

The Civil War started as a picnic and ended in compassion, but in between were four hideous years of twisted flesh, burning fevers, rampant pus, and oozing raw stumps. Never before had America faced even a hint of such agony and the way it responded to the occasion is fascinating history. In a very real sense the War Between the States brought forth a medical revolution and, perhaps above all, an awareness of public health. The terrible, swift scalpel became less terrible: and the dank, dirty, dingy pesthouse evolved into a pavilion of hope. Nursing, dentistry, and pharmacy also experienced a renaissance and the art and science of military medicine was projected into the future. The man of medicine who served in the Civil War was, whether he liked it or not, first and foremost a surgeon and always referred to as such.

Though his first knife may well have been government issued, he learned the tricks of the trade in due course and sometimes became quite an expert. "Do your best" was the general idea, and most surgeons did, or at least tried. Nearly all the older doctors had received their education on an apprenticeship basis but the younger men, those who made up the bulk of the army surgeons, usually held a medical school diploma along with an office internship. Little attention was paid to clinical instruction, and in most cases the laboratory was all but forgotten. Further, stethoscopes, thermometers, syringes, and the like were widely used in Europe while many doctors here at home had never seen them let alone used them.

In regard to ability and competence, there is no reason to believe the doctors in the North and the South differed in any significant way. While the North was home to more prestigious medical institutions, the South was learning to become less dependent on the North in this area at the outbreak of the war. A number of schools became established. Whether good, bad, or indifferent, the doctors were needed and just about every device was tried to keep up supply, a task compounded by frequent absenteeism. This situation was by no means peculiar to the medical people, for many others in the Civil War had the habit of picking up their blankets and heading back to the old homestead.

This is exactly the case for Inman in the novel, Cold Mountain, by Charles Frazier. After suffering a severe wound to his neck during battle, Inman is thought to be destined for death. However, he is taken to a medical facility where the doctors leave him alone to stare through the open window in pain while his neck tries to heal itself. Against the odds, Inman survives, but his will to fight the war has died. A new will to fight has been born inside of him, the will to fight his way home. He acts on this and begins his journey, picking up his blankets and heading back to the old homestead.

A man suffering from an amputated leg occupies the bed next to Inman in the hospital. The endless lines of men waiting to have an arm or a leg taken off often overwhelmed the staffs of these hospitals. The trademark of Civil War surgery was amputation. More arms and legs were chopped off in this war than in any other conflict in which the country has ever been engaged. According to Federal records, three out of four operations were amputations and there is a good reason to believe the same figures obtained in the Confederacy. At Gettysburg, for an entire week, from dawn to twilight, some surgeons did nothing but cut off arms and legs.

The sound of the saw, the gushing of blood, and the squeak of carts and wagons filled to the top with their hideous cargoes made a most familiar setting. In the surgery of Civil War vintage, the only important ally of the operator and his patient was nature herself, for the great work of the medicine men of ancient Greece and Rome had not only been ignored, but also appreciably undone. In essence, the physician became a man of science and the surgeon evolved into a part-time barber. And here the scalpel and saw remained until the latter part of the nineteenth century.

Once the knife and the saw had done its duty, the question was would microbes attack, and moreover would they win? In general, it was the patient's toughest battle, an engagement of toxins, pus, hemorrhage, fever, and terrifying convulsions pitted against Mother Nature. But nature could be aided, sometimes with telling success. Good food and tender care, if available, and the will to live could and would help. There were indications that victory helped too, for some surgeons noted better results when their side had won the battle. Infection did not always bring about death via the microbial toxins or the destruction of vital organs, for often the patient died of hemorrhage as a consequence of destroyed blood vessels.

If the treatment of severe bleeding calls for dramatic measures today, it was heroic then. According to one source, blood transfusions were attempted exactly twice during the war; one died, one lived. The latter was thought to be in the divine hands to be sure. To the casual peruser of Civil War medicine, the general impression seems to be that our greatest calamity brought forth little more than hundreds of fetid hospitals and thousands of botched amputations. The most palpable effects were, not surprisingly, in military medicine in general and the United States Medical Department in particular. In matters of "pure medicine", not much appears at the first glance, but the respectable number of developments, revelations, and the like, come intro focus upon close inspection.

Certainly experience was gained in handling the knife and the saw, and many surgeons were becoming less squeamish in entering the body. Many more advancements were also realized during the wartime medical era. Though the lesson of war is never worth the fee, history shows that we did learn.