Other surgical sets could have been used by “contract” or used by both the Union and the Confederacy. Contract surgeons usually brought their own surgery kit on the battlefield. Because the “contract” surgeons were not technically members of the army, as the war progressed they were usually placed in the hospitals to do follow-up work. To replace these contract surgeons, people who volunteered to serve and had a medical degree were certified by the army to operate on soldiers. …show more content…
Some medicine bottles are japanned, which means they are painted black, and were used because it was less likely that the bottle would break like glass ones would. Most of the bottles have a cork top with twine wrapped around it to ensure that the cork stayed on since screw-on tops were inverted post-civil war. Medicine bottles usually had paper labels. Medicine bottles were very important because they transported treatments for pain, sanitation, vitamins, oils, drying out agents, and many more pharmaceuticals. Without these medications, many soldiers (and other people) would have died because they didn’t have the proper