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Essay On Civil War Medicine

800 Words4 Pages

The Civil War and Modern Medicine The Civil War greatly contributed to modern medicine techniques by making astounding discoveries and changing medical practices to what we know today. Doctors, Surgeons, and Soldiers all had to face the hardships of the battle field and the consequences they encountered while being in the war zones. The most challenging oppression faced was the amount of contagious diseases that spread during that time. Though these illnesses were incredibly difficult to treat, they helped doctors learn how to treat them and how to avoid them. The many hundreds of injuries encountered on the daily caused big challenges for transporting patients. Surgeons had to deal with the horror of being on the battle field while searching …show more content…

Jonathan Letterman spent many weeks creating a new system to care for injured patients. He put together more than 50 ambulances during 1862 to transport injured soldiers. His techniques became standard and contributed to today’s ambulance protocol. Ambulances during the Civil War consisted of a horse-drawn carriage that held two patients. Plastic Surgery became popular after the war, and helped wounded soldiers re-create facial structures. Plastic surgeons used many new procedures to re-build a soldiers facial bones for the first time. Gurdon Buck became one of the first surgeons to perform Plastic Surgery on a soldier. He used a never before seen approach to reduce scarring. Embalming deceased soldiers also became popular because it was the only way to send a body back to its family. Railroads refused to carry dead bodies without embalming them first. Embalming remained a popular practice and eventually became a staple way to bury the dead. Dr. Thomas Holmes became the first surgeon to embalm a deceased soldier; and after being successful, Prosthetics became extremely popular after the war. So many amputations were performed because they could be done quickly and messily, however this left many former soldiers suffering to resume normal life. After the war, 133 patents were filed over the creations of

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Beating the enemy and saving lives are top foci of combat, both accomplished through innovations to make armies more effective and efficient as seen in the American Civil War. The Minie Ball, a cylindrical round, was innovated by Claude-Etienne Minie in 1848 within France to load rifles more rapidly than the sphere style ammunition it replaced (A, B). The closure of a sucking chest wound was innovated by Benjamin Howard in the United States during 1863 as a procedure to save lives by applying an air tight seal to a wound that was proven as “certain death” in previous battles (D). The Minie Ball and the closure of a sucking chest wound were both great innovations used during the American Civil War, but the Minie Ball had a much greater impact before the year 1900 as it allowed armies to eliminate more enemy soldiers than the closure of the sucking chest wound saved. On a global platform, each innovation made huge influences in the way the world’s armies progressed

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The most popular surgery amongst the most well-known surgeries led amid the war was amputation. Working in the field, specialists took in two key strategies: Leave the injury open and clean it frequently until new skin framed, or close the injury with a fold of skin. The second alternative was all the more tastefully satisfying however accompanied the potential for difficult contamination. The war begun to see the rise of particular fields of surgery, with the advancement of plastic surgery specifically. Carlton Burgan was one of the first to receive surgery during the war period.

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