Civil War Medical Advancements

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Did you know there were more medical advancements in the four years of the Civil War than the fifty years before? Doctors, soldiers and civilians alike were all desperate for more medical advancements and treatments so more soldiers could be saved. Some key advancements that changed medical fields included anesthesia and amputation. The Civil War was a terrible time in America’s history but many medical advancements and achievements came out of the war. Conditions were terrible for the wounded and diseased during the Civil War because doctors were unprepared for the amount of serious injuries. There were makeshift hospitals in the battlefields, nearby school houses and churches to help save the wounded and diseased. Doctors such as Mary Edwards Walker, Hartwell Carver Tompkins and Charles Conrad Abbott helped make many medical advancement during the war. A major advancement during the Civil War was amputations. Before amputations the common treatment was TLC (aided by rats and maggots). This procedure was not efficient enough because the number of injured was too high so surgeons used amputations. Amputations were a necessary procedure because injuries were so bad…show more content…
Patients were extremely lucky to have anesthesia because they did not feel any pain which was an amazing gift according to many victims such as Lieutenant General Thomas "Stonewall" Jackson. Jackson described anesthesia by saying "what an infinite blessing" as the anesthesia took effect. Anesthesiology has come a long way since then because now we have a lot more experience with anesthesia so we can have more complex surgeries that take a longer amount of time to save more lives. This drug greatly affected our medical fields, because we can now commonly use anesthesia as a pain reliever for surgery patients thanks to the experience we had with it during the
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