Civil War Doctors and Medicine Every Thursday Americans tune in to watch their favorite medical drama Grey’s Anatomy. Even the show is not completely accurate once you get past the crying and romance, a decent representation of today’s medicine is shown. However, modern medicine has not always been this way. When going into war injuries are to be expected by both sides. With today’s technology healing those who are wounded is not a challenge that arises anymore. Doctors during the Civil War can not say the same things that we do now. Civil war medicine has always been seen as unsanitary and unrefined which in some cases it was. Although the procedures performed by Civil had many faults, they serve was the building blocks for today’s medical
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The Civil War hospital process begins with transportation in an ambulance. The ambulances at the time were not fast they were slow, bumpy, and poorly equipped wagons (Hospital and Medical Knowledge). Many soldiers were lucky if they even survived the trip to the hospitals. Now a days in hospitals their top priority is sanitation. During the Civil War the idea of sanitation was unheard of. The lack of sanitation was one of the main reasons many soldiers died in hospitals. Most of the patients had a limb or two amputated add different factors such as unclean water, sleeping quarters, and people the chances of your wounds becoming infected are very high. It wasn’t just the rooms that weren’t clean but the doctors as well they never washed their hands in between each patient and they wore no protective gear such as gloves or hairnets. Going back to the topic of uneducated doctors, at the time they inferred that pus from an infected wound was a good sign and actually transferred pus from one patient’s wound to another’s (Hospitals and Medical Knowledge). However, hospitals did not stay this way towards the end of the war hospitals that were well ventilated and had enough space for patients began to be built (Dixon). At these Hospitals doctors and nurses were taught how to properly care for patients (Dixon). These new hospitals that began at the end of the Civil War would be the beginning of a new era of medical care which evolved to what we have
The Civil War hospital process begins with transportation in an ambulance. The ambulances at the time were not fast they were slow, bumpy, and poorly equipped wagons (Hospital and Medical Knowledge). Many soldiers were lucky if they even survived the trip to the hospitals. Now a days in hospitals their top priority is sanitation. During the Civil War the idea of sanitation was unheard of. The lack of sanitation was one of the main reasons many soldiers died in hospitals. Most of the patients had a limb or two amputated add different factors such as unclean water, sleeping quarters, and people the chances of your wounds becoming infected are very high. It wasn’t just the rooms that weren’t clean but the doctors as well they never washed their hands in between each patient and they wore no protective gear such as gloves or hairnets. Going back to the topic of uneducated doctors, at the time they inferred that pus from an infected wound was a good sign and actually transferred pus from one patient’s wound to another’s (Hospitals and Medical Knowledge). However, hospitals did not stay this way towards the end of the war hospitals that were well ventilated and had enough space for patients began to be built (Dixon). At these Hospitals doctors and nurses were taught how to properly care for patients (Dixon). These new hospitals that began at the end of the Civil War would be the beginning of a new era of medical care which evolved to what we have