Medical Advances During The Civil War Essay

The Civil War took place before many advancements in Medicine. Many of which are essential today. For example CPR. Many of these essential advancements also included sanitation. Some medications such as pain relievers, helped while treating the soldiers. Even though some of the medical practices may have cause more harm than it did help, this period in medicine actually helped in advancing to modern medicine. Sanitation was not commonly practiced in the Civil war. Doctors had no idea that when going from surgery to surgery and not washing your hands in between, spread infection and disease. Health care professionals did not clean instruments in between patients and on the rare occasion that they did, they often used some kind of dirty cloth. Pus was also seen as a sign of healing, which now we know is a sign of infection. During amputation rusty saws were used to saw of the limbs of a soldier. Things near the soldier, like linens were usually soiled with blood and urine and were not cleaned. These soiled objects could be carrying disease and expose the patient to and infection that they would not have been exposed to if all things were sanitized. This scenario often made matters …show more content…
Dysentery being the most fatal one, is an infection of the intestines. Symptoms include: severe diarrhea and blood and mucus being present in bodily waste. Typhoid fever, caused the second most deaths and is a bacterial disease that you get if you come in contact with contaminated food or water. Disease killed over 400,000 soldiers and battle wounds killed about 200,000 soldiers. Battle wounds were mostly caused by rifle bullets, many of them being from the percussion rifle. Percussion rifles are rifles with percussion caps instead of the flintlock or matchlock caps. This rifle was much quicker to reload, making it the most preferred rifle compared to