The Importance Of Hospitals In The Civil War

Hospitals during the Civil War were not like the hospitals we are privileged to have today. They were congested and were filthy with diseases and the smell of blood and body odor filled the air. There were field hospitals and field stations that aided soldiers on the field until they could be transferred to a general hospital in a nearby city or town. After being transferred to a general hospital, a soldier might then be transferred to a specialized hospital. Specialized hospitals treated only certain types of problems. The most common specialized hospitals treated eye problems or sexually transmitted diseases. Field stations were set up by surgeons on the edge of battlefields before a battle even started. The wounded walked or were carried to the field station and were sorted out by the severity of their injury. Soldiers whose injuries could not be helped were given narcotics. Those whose injuries needed

Women, although, did much more than change bandages and tend to wounds, they also wrote letters for soldiers, cooked and served food, passes out supplies, did laundry, and read to distressed soldiers. Many women from the North served as nurses under the auspices of the UCCS. Perhaps one of the most famous women nurses during the Civil War, Clara Barton, changed the world by creating the American Red Cross.
The conditions of the hospitals during the civil war were not what we expect of our hospitals today. The neglection of the sanitation of camps and little knowledge about how diseases are carried led to many many deaths during the civil war. The hospitals still had not discovered the importances of sanitation and hygiene. The lack of water and time meant that they did not wash their hands or their instruments after usage and surgery. Knives covered in blood were used as scalpels and doctors wore pus stained clothes, because of this sepsis or pyemia, pus in the blood, was very common and very