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Impact Of Medicine And Hospitals During The Civil War

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Kaitlyn Lehane
May 22, 2017
Civil War Research Paper

Impact of Civil War Hospitals and Medicine

76,000 men were treated during the 4 years of the Civil War in hospitals. Medicine was a critical part of the Civil War during the late 1800s. The Civil War was broken up into two separate sides of the United States, the Union which was the North and the Confederacy, which was the South. During the war, many people became wounded badly or killed. Medicine was a practice of the treatment for infection and disease. Hospitals during the Civil war aided soldiers until they could be transferred to hospitals in nearby cities. What was the impact of Medicine and Hospitals on the Civil War? Medicine and Hospitals impacted the Civil War by creating a …show more content…

It paved a new path for medicine to be later used in the future. During this time, 620,000 men died in the war and ⅔ were a result of disease. To prevent this problem, William Hammond created pavilions to allow ventilation throughout the hospitals and decrease overcrowding. It also helped in keeping the hospitals clean, in 1862 it was unknown that germs caused diseases and when the pavilions were created, they reduced the amount of diseases and decreases the amount of deaths. (Netzley). "Washington, D.C. Patients in Ward K of Armory Square Hospital" shows the hospital style with the new ventilation and the wounded soldiers during the war. Each soldier had their own space that allowed for less spreading of disease. The pavilion style hospital was a design to be used for the next 75 years, as it became a very successful hospital …show more content…

Before the war occurred, there were an estimated 2,000 hospital beds and by the end, nearly 135,000 more were produced. The Civil War created a new solution for wounded soldiers called anesthetics. They were plastic limbs used for when soldiers got a limb amputated and could no longer use them anymore (“Civil War Medicine”). The knife used for amputation was very dirty and unsterilized, due to the fact they had no idea that germs caused disease. It was a small long knife that was very sharp to get far into the bodies of the wounded soldiers without having to touch much of their flesh (“Object Record- Knife”). They also used an object known as a tooth key which was used to extract teeth. It was made of wood and metal, with a metal hook on the bottom to attach to the tooth and pull it out (“Object Record- Tooth

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