Preview

Medical Care During The Civil War Essay

Good Essays
Open Document
Open Document
539 Words
Grammar
Grammar
Plagiarism
Plagiarism
Writing
Writing
Score
Score
Medical Care During The Civil War Essay
Medical care in the civil war

Medical care during the civil war changed the world of medicine we now know and use today. It will talk about the main causes of death such as illnesses and different health issues they suffered, and what they did to help the soldiers. We will also be talking about the different types of medicine that they had used along with all of the different types of tools that they used on all the patients during surgery on the patient's. Medical care during the civil war was much different from medical care that we use today, but what they did back then we sometimes still use today. Most medical malfunctions for soldiers were either battle wounds or disease. The things that caused these diseases were due to poor hygiene, this
…show more content…
All these amputations were all over 4% the highest percentage of the amputation was 100% and the lowest was 5%.
Medical care during the civil war was poor because they never cleaned the tools between patient due to that they had to be quick with work before wounds became fatal. They also never washed the bandages when they used them on patients, when one was done they'd pass it on to another person without disinfecting. For an anesthesia they used chloroform for the patients during amputations. They also used penicillin for patients for an antibiotic and a pain med. We still use penicillin today for an antibiotic that is used to help fight internal infections and illnesses.
During the civil war they faced many losses between soldiers and many other military figures, whether it was from disease or an extreme wound from the battlefield. the amount of losses was at great percent during and after the war. But don’t forget about where we would be without the civil

You May Also Find These Documents Helpful

  • Satisfactory Essays

    The Civil War affected the lives of many people. There are two groups that were affected most. Those two groups were the women and men in america, and the other group was the slaves.…

    • 169 Words
    • 1 Page
    Satisfactory Essays
  • Good Essays

    The Civil War brought on trying times to not only the American people but also…

    • 842 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    The Civil War had a very large affect on all of the States. It changed men from gentlemen that went to church every Sunday and never cussed to people who rarely went to church and cussed all the time. Some of the people in the war were also very corrupt and did not do things as they should be done. The way that the enemy was looked at was even changed. All of these things were talked about in "The Civil War Diary of Cyrus F. Boyd".…

    • 1130 Words
    • 5 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Powerful Essays

    The Civil war was the most momentous and crucial period of time in the history of America. Not only did this war bring an end to slavery but also paved way for numerous social and political changes. The country had already been torn by the negative trend in race relations and the numerous cases of slave uprisings were taking their toll on the country 's political and social structure. The country was predominately divided up into 3 sections, the North, the South, and the West. Each of these groups had different fundamental interests. The North wanted economies depending on farming, factories and milltowns, while the West relied on expansion and development of land for farming and new towns. The South mainly relied on agriculture like tobacco, cotton, wheat or slaves and a cotton gin. While slavery is cited as the most common cause of the Civil War, it is believed that there were several other factors involved. In other words, though slavery was the major cause it was certainly not the only cause.…

    • 1379 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Powerful Essays
  • Good Essays

    When the baritones of cannon barrages, melodies of muskets and the sound of the rebel cry had finally subsided, The American Civil War had had already taken a deadly toll. Four years of gruesome fighting had decimated the population. Half a million of three million men had been wounded in combat. Over two hundred thousand others had been killed. Frontal assaults turned into suicidal dashes that resulted in victory for no man.…

    • 2152 Words
    • 9 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    The North took victory in the civil war against the South. The North had several of advantages when it came to defeating the other side.The blockade. As the war progressed the blockade of Southern ports slowly became more effective, closing the ports and thus cutting off the vital supplies needed to fight the war. This includes medicine. The South had to rely on Europe even more so than the North for supplies with which to fight the war so by eliminating more and more ports into which the supplies could come into the Confederacy the North slowly deprived the South of it's ability to properly fight. By the end of the war many Confederate soldiers didn't have the ammo, food, or even effective weapons required to campaign with. Attrition. The Union had more men…

    • 510 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Satisfactory Essays

    There was many new inventions and technology during the civil war like railroads, balloons, and the civil war photography and a couple more .A lot of the new technology helped like the railroads, they would us them to move troops and supplies from one place to another . Another important technology was the telegraph, the telegraph was a system for transmitting messages from a long distance along a wire using braking and electrical connections. They could use the telegraph to send more than a million messages to and from the battlefield. They also had stuff like submarines and balloons, which were both used in war. They also invented a gun called the repeater, they were so fast it could shot seven bullets in 30 seconds. And they didn’t just…

    • 167 Words
    • 1 Page
    Satisfactory Essays
  • Better Essays

    The musket that was very common during the American Revolutionary Wars was now improved on. The rifled musket could now effectively shoot accurately at 500 yards. This allowed troops to stay further back than normal which had a large strategic impact and an impact on the soldier’s daily life. Before the Civil War, troops traveled by foot or from animals. During the Civil War, the railroad was of great use for soldiers.…

    • 1119 Words
    • 5 Pages
    Better Essays
  • Satisfactory Essays

    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.…

    • 269 Words
    • 2 Pages
    Satisfactory Essays
  • Good Essays

    As a result of having no organized medical corps in the army, conditions at most of the hospitals were poor. More soldiers during this time died of complications other than battlefield wounds such as dysentery, small pox, and pneumonia. (Son of the South). Hospitals were overcrowded and nurses lacked adequate quality of food and water, clean clothing, sanitation equipment, and other medication supplies to properly provide care for the injured. Because of this, hospitals were breeding grounds for disease and death.…

    • 448 Words
    • 2 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Powerful Essays

    When Walt Whitman wrote that he believed the "real war" would never get into the books, this is the side he was talking about (Belferman 1996). Yet, it is important that we remember and recall the medical side of the conflict too, as horrible and terrifying as it was (Adams 1952). Long before doctors and people knew anything about bacteria and what caused disease was the time of Civil War medicine. Doctors during the Civil War (always referred to as "surgeons") were incredibly unprepared. Most surgeons had as little as two years of medical school because very few pursued further education. At that time, Harvard Medical School did not even own a single stethoscope or microscope until well after the war. Most Civil War surgeons had never treated a gun shot wound because they were accustomed to treating minor head colds and sore throats. Many had never performed surgery or even held a scalpel. Medical boards let extremely unqualified students practice medicine due to much needed help for wounded soldiers on the battlefield. "Some ten thousand surgeons served in the Union and about four thousand served in the Southern Confederacy (Cunningham 1958)."…

    • 1798 Words
    • 8 Pages
    Powerful Essays
  • Good Essays

    In the early years of the Civil War it became clear that disease would be the greatest killer. Twice as many Civil War soldiers died of disease then that were killed in combat. This was due to unsanitary and filthy conditions, untrained Medical personnel and poor medical examination of new soldier's. One fact from the Civil War was 315,000 soldiers died from illnesses that included: 44,558 from diarrhea/dysentery, 10,063 from malaria, 34,833 from typhoid, 958 from typhus and 436 from yellow fever.…

    • 466 Words
    • 2 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    Weather In The Civil War

    • 510 Words
    • 3 Pages

    Weather was the most impactful element of the Civil War. Due to the war occurring not long after the Little Ice Age, the weather had strange occurrences. Soldiers could wake up to a nice sunny day, just to go to bed in a snowstorm. Something most people do not realize is, the soldiers had to basically sleep outside. No matter what the weather was, nice or horrible, it greatly impacted their day. Even though the soldiers are mainly who are talked about suffering from the weather, civilians had to bear it as well.…

    • 510 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Better Essays

    Ptsd In The Military

    • 1458 Words
    • 6 Pages

    On physiological side they believed that the soldiers reacted to the strain of the Civil War with cardiac disorder (Levinson,” General semantics and PTSD in the military”). They also had a psychological belief that was nostalgia, which means that people who were at war battling in a foreign territory would become home sick (Levinson,” General semantics and PTSD in the military”). Being home sick as a soldier can lead to depression even if they were already going through PTSD and or suicide…

    • 1458 Words
    • 6 Pages
    Better Essays
  • Good Essays

    The working conditions for doctors during the civil war was terrible. They used unsanitary tools and garments. 66.95372517% of the casualties in the war came from diseases. After the war, they made advances on the working conditions of the medical personnel. Another effect of the Civil War was that 2% of the entire American population died during the Civil War. Most of these casualties were men in their 20’s. This meant that 2% of the population was without someone to love. The worst part was that everybody in the war was American, making the population decrease twice as fast. As you can see, these two, were affected greatly by the war.…

    • 670 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Good Essays