Minie Ball Comparison Essay

Beating the enemy and saving lives are top foci of combat, both accomplished through innovations to make armies more effective and efficient as seen in the American Civil War. The Minie Ball, a cylindrical round, was innovated by Claude-Etienne Minie in 1848 within France to load rifles more rapidly than the sphere style ammunition it replaced (A, B). The closure of a sucking chest wound was innovated by Benjamin Howard in the United States during 1863 as a procedure to save lives by applying an air tight seal to a wound that was proven as “certain death” in previous battles (D). The Minie Ball and the closure of a sucking chest wound were both great innovations used during the American Civil War, but the Minie Ball had a much greater impact before the year 1900 as it allowed armies to eliminate more enemy soldiers than the closure of the sucking chest wound saved. On a global platform, each innovation made huge influences in the way the world’s armies progressed

With a 90% attributed casualty rate to the Minie Ball innovation, leaders had no ethical choice than to modify the tactics and doctrine for the current modern warfare (C}. The casualties sustained in Napoleonic style fighting using the Minie Ball was unacceptable by any means shown through the carnage produced during the war (F}. When it comes to the closure of a sucking chest wound, the procedure was adopted by surgeons across the American Civil War Theater as the way to treat the sucking chest wound (D). Anything less than applying the principles of this treatment would have left a patient knocking at deaths door, an ethical dilemma no surgeon would want to be in with an innovation proven to counter this