Medicine+and+Hospitals

=Medicine & Hospitals = media type="custom" key="5634873" Essential Questions: Do you think the practices of the surgeons and doctors helped the wounded soldiers by removing a limb because of a bullet?

How was the term “bite the bullet” created?

At the end of the Civil war in 1865, there were approximately 623,026 deaths. So far, the Civil War was the deadliest war of US history, in second place would be WWII at 407,316 deaths. Without the help of the research and doctors on the battlefield, the deaths would have been much higher. Doctors would issue out two different painkillers morphine and opium. Which people back then didn’t know that it would most likely become an addiction after the war. The doctors and surgeons took about 13 weeks of medical school. Amputations were very a very common practice, and it would save a persons life if they got it in time. A minie ball wouldn’t travel as fast as bullets would nowadays, they would have much less velocity, and wouldn’t pierce a straight hole into bone. The slow speed of the balls crushed the bone inside, which left bone fragments scattered in the skin with extra shrapnel from the ball exploding. As the ball would hit their clothing, the bullet would take cloth with it into the wound and would normally create an infection. Death of infections was a large cause of deaths, and most of the amputated soldiers lived. Removing a limb at the right time could stop the spread of infections to the body, and mostly save the persons life. Surgeons in that time were armed with cutting tools. They would normally cut off the blood flow to the arm, then take a scalpel and remove the flesh on the outside, then taking their bone saw and cutting the bone and would put a sponge on the amputated spot to clean blood. Using a sponge wasn’t the greatest idea, because they could get chloroform poisoning. The amputations would normally take about 15 minutes total and would move onto the next soldier. Anesthesia was scarce and would run out fast, and a lot of soldiers would actually bite their tongue off because of the pain of amputating, so the surgeons put a bullet in their teeth for them to bite down on, which created the term “bite the bullet”. Without the surgeons and doctors on the battle field the casualties would be much worse with many more infections. The doctors were very unsterial, mostly not washing their hands before a new amputation or surgery or using dirty water to wash them which could normally lead to infection in a wound. Dcotors on the battle feild used the first type of ambulances, puled by horse and piled on people to take them to the hospital tents set up nearby, i there was no area to set up a hospital they would normally take over a nearby familys house or barn and use that. Total in the war there were about 115 surgeons, and some even died of an illness but they had some left to spare. There were so many casualties in the war that the doctors almost always had a patient on their table for medicine or an amputation. The docors would leave large piles of rotting limbs, that have been amputated. Women also started to be assistants in this war to the doctors, and later became full fledge doctors, such as Mary Edwards Walker, who also won the medal of honor that year. The medical practice in the Civil war was gruesome, but it helped saved many lives.

http://s1.hubimg.com/u/283572_f520.jpg http://s1.hubimg.com/u/283584_f520.jpg




 * Click For Flashcards!**

media type="custom" key="5646465"

media type="custom" key="5657441"

media type="file" key="5633.mov" width="300" height="300"

Video On the Field Hospital During the Civil War.

Works Cited Weeks, Dick. “http://www.civilwarhome.com/civilwarmedicineintro.htm.” http://www.civilwarhome.com/index.html. ShotGun, n.d. Web. 2 Sept. 2008. .Works Cited

Flanagan, Austin Edward. “Sanitation.” American Civil War. Ed. Steven E Woodworth. Vol. one. Detroit: Gale, 2008. 25-26. Print. two vols. American Civil War.