Gangrene And Glory: Medical Care During The American Civil War

Medical care plays an important role in the health and longevity of life, becoming increasingly more innovative as medical knowledge and technology expands. When regarding the nature of health care, it is often defined by specialized safety measures, rapidly developing medicine/medical treatments, and established medical facilities with highly trained work forces. Although these characteristics are known to be prevalent in American medicine today, their advancement may not have had the same degree of maturation without the limitations and hindrances faced during the American Civil War. The challenges of the Civil War provided a unique climate in which an urgency for advancement and reform throughout the medical field became an impending necessity.

The scarcity of resources and practiced physicians that characterized medical care of the era was increasingly evident in war times, ultimately displaying a growing necessity of effective treatment that could accommodate the masses of Union and Confederate soldiers. Gangrene and Glory: Medical Care During the American Civil War by Frank R.Freemon illustrates the shortcomings of ineffective health care and revolution of surgical practices, highlighting the fields profound impacts on the dynamism between Union and Confederate army forces. This source draws evident separations of American medicine in the 1850’s and wartime medical treatment demonstrable through the comparisons of mortality rates of soldiers as well as depicting the evolutions of surgery. The most widely infamous of surgical technique was the practice of amputation (in which surgeons would perform when arterial damage of a limb was irreversible), however the use of anesthesia such as chloroform/ether as well as progressions in plastic surgery and open chest surgery also contributed to the refinement of medicine. The utilization of statistical evidence throughout this source demonstrates not only the severity of disease and death toll within small battles, but the velocity in which the

The impacts of growth within medical facilities and skilled medical staff not only stimulated the evolution of medical knowledge but also provided an increasingly intensified and more organized system of care throughout medical departments that were ill prepared in the beginnings of the Civil War. This lack of preparation was particularly evident in the inadequacies of proper medical education in which physicians standings in the field were established based on seniority rather than merit. In Medical and Surgical Care During the American Civil War: 1861-1865, Robert F. Reilly depicts the education levels and processes of medical licensure within limited institutions that fostered impending deficiencies in knowledge and overall adequacy of professionals within medical sanctions. In response to the dramatic demands of health care lighted by the increasingly prominent oppressions of war, the development of large general medical facilities like Depot Field Hospital, Chimborazo hospital, and Macdougall hospital emerged. Reilly depicts combat-related and non combat-related challenges of medical care, highlighting the measurable organizational improvements of medical departments on the battlefield as well. The integration of Jonathan