Civil War

“There were more ambulances available in 1864, but without effective pain medicines, soldiers faced a horrifying and rattling ride to safety. There were more hospital tents for shelter, but without antibiotics to quell communicable diseases, epidemics spread unchecked. There were better-trained physicians, but without an understanding of antisepsis, surgical operations led to death from infection. While the usual story of Civil War medicine highlights bravery, caring, and organizational innovations, the reality of war for the wounded and sick was more sharply defined by agony, butchery, and loneliness than anything else” (Rutkow, 310). . . .There were no astounding medical breakthroughs during the Civil War. Communicable diseases ran rampant. Wound infections spread unchecked. Surgery, despite the performance of tens of thousands of operations, remained as barbaric and crude in 1865 as it had been in 1861. . . The significant achievement of Civil War-era medicine has to do with its transformation in the administration and organization of military medical care, from an appalling lack of preparation and concern to readiness and sympathy for the patient in a war that was waged on a scale never before known. Discipline was imposed on what had been an undisciplined profession. . . . The lasting medical impact of the war experience was not measured by ingenious innovations or engrossing surgical victories. Instead, it derived from the physicians’ day-to-day caring for sick and injured human beings in the face of scientific ignorance, superstition, and political interference” (Rutkow, 318).