Medicine During The Civil War

During the Civil War technology and medicine was not very advanced . Most medical schools did not own a stethoscope . Which meant many of the future doctors were not prepared. During the war most doctors and surgeons were not fully trained . Usually most of them only got 2 or less years of training and many of them had never treated a gunshot wound . But most of them had no idea how disease was spread . Many of the doctors had no idea how disease was spread . There were so many hurt people that they did not have time to wash their hands . They also hardly had anytime to sterilize their equipment . So if a soldier had to get their arm amputated ; they had a high risk of infection . Seventy-five percent of the amputations were successful . But they still had a long way to recover because of disease . They had a higher chance of dying of infection and disease than in battle . Roughly 240,000 soldiers died of disease . There was also a lot of illnesses going around . The most common were dysentery, measles, smallpox, pneumonia, …show more content…
They would use rugs , bed , curtains , mostly anything . The doctors did not have anytime to sterilize things and there was usually still blood on the table and on their clothes . The soldiers would be brought in and sat down to wait in the long line of other hurt soldiers . Once it was their turn they would be brought to the table where they would be operated on . The doctor would put chloroform on a cloth and put it on the patient's mouth and nose until they became unconscious and then their arm or leg was amputated. Once the operation or amputation was done ; they were sent somewhere else to rest and recovery. But that was still a long road for them because they had fevers and had a higher chance of getting an infection and disease. The men were sometimes sent somewhere else to