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Medicine Before The Civil War Essay

964 Words4 Pages

The era of medicine before the Civil War wasn’t beneficial. They had just started common practices and having few uneducated nurses. When entering the Civil War diseases and hygiene became a huge problem for the soldiers on the front lines since doctors had little knowledge about medicine. Amputation, Lewis Sayre, and diseases aided the construct of modern medicine from the Civil War.
Amputation was a familiar use during the Civil War. Since medicine wasn’t advance during the war to give the necessary treatment to the solider for a bullet in their leg or arm surgeons saw amputation as the greatest survival for the solider (“Amputation”). The most amputated limbs were legs and arms (“Amputation”). In the medical tent the surgeons had numerous soldiers coming in with bullets in their limbs or diseases the soldiers have and if amputation was delayed for more than 48 hours there would be blood poisoning, bone infection, or gangrene in the solider (“Amputation”). …show more content…

In total measles ended 11,000 soldier’s life from both the Union and Confederate side (“Civil War Diseases”). Since all soldiers were close to together during the whole entire war the disease was able to spread rapidly to one solider and to the next solider (“Civil War Diseases”). Measles wasn’t as deadly as any other diseases that were contracted in the Civil War (“Civil War Diseases”). The Civil War was the start of frequently used practices and vaccinations. They started using amputation in a less advanced way but learned from their mistakes to only use amputation when it’s necessary. Lewis Sayre was a huge support by conducting the first surgery for hip-joint ankylosis, but even since him we have conducted more surgeries than ever for more than one body part. With the discovery of the diseases in the Civil War, influenced the need for vaccinations for those different diseases to prevent them from harming the human

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