More handpicked essays just for you.
Medicine in the american civil war paper
Civil war medical practices reaserch paper
Civil war medical practices reaserch paper
Don’t take our word for it - see why 10 million students trust us with their essay needs.
The thesis of this chapter states that in certain situations, it is crucial to listen to a medical professional, however, in others, it is very important to listen to yourself and also to do what you feel is right. The author of Complications," Atul Gawane, has written this specific chapter to persuade the reader of his thesis. If the choice you make is incorrect, then it could potentially be a matter of life and death. Atul Gawande gives multiple examples of patients that have made wrong and right decisions to prove his point. He uses the personal anecdotes of four different people, with four decisions to prove his point.
As soon as the Civil War started, injuries increased and diseases spread at a rapid pace. Sickness spread to millions. In fact, disease caused 65% of deaths, while war injuries caused up to 100% (“Disease”). Abundant amounts of medical issues caused medical procedures to evolve at a rapid speed. The medical advancements during the Civil War led to future medical technologies and procedures.
During the beginning of the of the Civil War, there were many medical advancements, like the quinine a drug that helped fight Malaria. The doctors had just recently discovered bacteria and antisepsis. With this new knowledge, they began to change the way they treated patients and organized areas for treating the wounded. They started to think about things like cleanliness and how to set up a hospital. As the Civil War went on, it was less of a battle to see who was winning the fights and more to see who could keep their men healthy.
Although it was a bloody war, disease was the number one cause of death due to all the unsanitary equipment being used. Not only did the cleanness of things factor in the deaths caused by disease, but so did the knowledge of the people back then. They were not familiar with bacterial transmission, so not much was done to keep things sanitary. Luckily, today we have way better technology, knowledge and medical equipment. If it wasn’t for the Civil War and all the people who put their lives on the line, the world wouldn’t be how it is
CIVIL WAR MEDICINE The American Civil War was known for its cruelty– its harsh weapons and tactics produced the highest causality rates in any American conflict. Over 600,000 Americans were killed in the conflict. the Civil War actually marked a turning point in medicine – not only on the battlefield, but in the country as well. Most of the war show patients taking a drink of Whiskey or biting a belt or strap while doctors did their business.
Infections, like trench foot, were common during the civil war because there were no antibiotics, surgical instruments were never washed, and hospitals were very unhygienic. Doctors, surgeons, and nurses had very little knowledge of how disease and infection spread. Since there were no antibiotics, the most common solution for infections were amputations. If you did not have the limb amputated, normally you would die. So, it was either death or absence of a limb, which one would you
The Civil War was filled with many diseases and deaths. Over 620,000 men lost their lives during this war; roughly two thirds of the casualties were caused by the lack of medical knowledge of many diseases. The remaining one third of the casualties was from the actual battle itself. The war became a turning point for many women interested in the medical field. The knowledge of medicine was the beginning of a new age during the Civil War, and the lack of it led to many gruesome deaths.
There were over 30,000 amputation procedures done during the Civil War and depending on where you received the surgery is what your death rate was. “Hip amputations… had mortality rates of around 83%. An upper arm amputation… had a mortality rate of about 24%.” Not only did soldiers have to endure the war, once they came home their partners would notice that things were different with
The Civil War: Why It Was Worth It The Civil War was the bloodiest war ever fought in American history. Over 700,000 people lost their lives in the Civil War, which is more than the American deaths in World War I and World War II put together. Estimates of financial costs run as high as $5 billion, about $86.24 billion today, including cost of war by both governments, physical damage, and lost wages. The Civil War, a defining moment in American history, shaped the nation in profound ways.
At the beginning of the Civil War, medical equipment and knowledge was hardly up to the challenges created by/presented by the wounds, infections and sicknesses which diseased/badly harmed and bothered millions on both sides. Sicknesses like (disease that causes diarrhea), (dangerous disease spread by dirty conditions), dangerous lung disease, mumps, measles and (dangerous lung disease) spread among the poorly carefully cleaned (to remove germs) camps, destroying/cutting down men already weakened by strong (and scary) fighting and very simple (or too small) diet. Also, armies at first struggled to efficiently tend to and transport their wounded, accidentally and carelessly sacrificing more lives to mere
The germ theory of disease wasn’t established until 1870, and diseases were either thought to be direct or indirect inflammation. The sterile technique did not exist during that time era. Physicians were in the era before the germ theory of Nowadays the sanitization has protocols but during the Civil War there were not any protocols of
Over 40 percent of the men who died in the Civil War were unknown. Amputation was the key surgery provided to soldiers for broken or severely wounded limbs. The Union had the advantage when it came to enough men to fight in the war. The south was literally outnumbered two to one.
Thankfully, as evidence came to the doctor’s eyes that this belief was not the case, surgeons became more conservative with their operations and began to improve how they cared for the harmful
Medical men began to see the vale in laboratories, this lead to an increase numbers of hospitals with diagnostic labs. This, and improvements made to instruments such as the thermometer and microscope, and the introduction of the x-ray, the accuracy of diagnosis dramatically increased (Waller, “The Rise of the Medical Laboratory”). This ability “helped to establish the educated doctor’s credentials as an expert who alone could make sense of the body’s subtle signs” (Waller, “Doctors in Demand”). With these new advances came cures for aliments that had plagued populations for decades. Proper diagnoses and related health initiatives worked together to help lower the already declining mortality rates of communal diseases, such as tuberculosis, (Waller, “The McKeown Thesis and Its Critics”).
As a young girl, I simply thought that doctors just treated diseases. When one was sick they went to the doctor, the doctor diagnosed them and gave them a suitable treatment. However, as a first year medical student I now know that this is not the case. In modern society doctors don’t treat diseases- they treat the people who have the diseases. It’s not just medical students or people in the medical profession who know this- modern society as a whole has come to accept the fact that doctors are no longer medical scientists but carers who put their patients needs first and not the disease or illness they may have.
