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Becoming A Surgeon In The Civil War

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Becoming A Surgeon In The Civil War
Becoming a Surgeon in the Civil War
At the beginning of the Civil War, most people thought the war would only last a few weeks or months, so not much effort was put into recruiting doctors or surgeons. The surgeons that were recruited did not have formal training in medicine. They knew little about bacteriology and were ignorant of what caused the killer diseases. Most Civil War surgeons had never treated a gun shot wound or had actually performed surgery. They typically had two years of schooling, with only bookwork in the first year. The second year was usually a review of the first, with little hands-on training. These doctors tried the best they could to treat the wounded soldiers, and their knowledge of medicine improved each year.
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