Civil War Medicine

Civil War medicine was a far cry from today's medical technology. Back during the Civil War medical practices were pretty inept and ineffective.

The North had a small advantage over the South when it came to medical technology, but only slightly. They were both equally bad.

Getting sick or becoming wounded during the Civil War was the last thing that you wanted to have happen to you. It was usually a death sentence. Or if you were lucky you might actually survive.

Mercury was certainly one of the most harmful medicines given by Civil War doctors. Unfortunately doctors saw Mercury as a cure all and prescribed it for virtually every and any ailment. They simply didn't understand back then that it was actually poisonous to patients and often led to severe side effects such as brain damage.

Of course not every was horrible. Civil War medicine such as chloroform was actually very helpful to people. It was nothing more than an anesthetic but it allowed surgeons to put their patients to sleep while they operated on them. It also allowed patients to be operated on without having to go through the painful agony of the operation. Mercury was plentiful on both sides during the war.

The primary tool of the surgeon was the bone saw. I think it's pretty easy to imagine what this little piece of technology did for people. It sawed bones. If a soldier was shot in an arm or leg that usually meant bone saw time.

Amputations were wide spread but the simple reason was that surgeons had no other choice. They could not treat nor prevent infections that would inevitably take place after a soldier was wounded. The only prevention from infection was to amputate. Even this did not always work.

Amputations made up 75% of all field surgeries during the entire course of the Civil War.

By: Ken Stover

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