Battlefield Heart And Open Wounds Essay

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The Battlefield Heart and Open Wounds
The three soldiers that were wounded during the Battle of Gettysburg were Robert E. Lee, Joshua L. Chamberlain, and John Buford. The wounds of each of these soldiers were Robert E. Lee had a heart disease, Joshua L. Chamberlain had a gunshot wound that went through both hips, and John Buford had a gunshot wound in his left arm. The main reason for the occurrence of the American Civil War was the controversy over slavery, this caused the division of the U.S. and formed the North and South. The South allowed slavery while the North didn’t. The North was called the Union while the South was called the Confederacy. The American Revolution was fought during the years of 1861 and 1865. The American Civil War …show more content…

Lee. and he had a very serious heart disease. This is explained in the forward on page 16 and says,“He has been down that spring with the first assault of heart disease which will eventually kill him.” The best the doctors could do to help his condition during this time was to give him compressants, and what these compressants would do is limit or tolerate the pain but it wouldn’t completely stop the pain. Since this wasn’t an exterior wound the doctors could rarely do much unlike gunshot wounds. The only problem with this medicine was it didn’t help stop the disease only limit or tolerate the pain, so the patient was still very vulnerable to the disease. Robert E. Lee’s heart disease did eventually kill him due to the lack of medical technology.
The second soldier was Joshua Lawrence Chamberlain and he was shot with a bullet that went through both of his hips, this can be found on page 354. Many people did not expect him to live. He was a volunteer in the war for the Union Army. The medical attention he was treated with was the doctor extracted the bullet out of the wound and bandaged it. When the bullet was extracted they bandaged his wound with a dirty cloth to act as protection for the wound and help it heal faster. This process usually infected the wound because of the unsterilized equipment and the bacteria