The Civil War holds the record of being the deadliest war that the United States has ever been involved in. The Civil War’s death toll reached approximately 633,000 compared to the 521,000 lost in World War I and II combined1. Some of that was caused by the fact that medical techniques and care were not advancing as quickly as weapons were. Another major factor in the amount of casualties is disease which was typically caused by poor hygiene. It took a majority of the war before doctors realized what was causing the diseases and other deaths and what techniques could be used order to lessen the death toll.
Disease was the main cause of death in the Civil War. There were around 206,000 soldiers killed in battle, 337,000 died from disease, and the rest of the deaths were those who died as prisoners. The medical statistics of the war show how deadly disease was being that one in 13. 5 died from disease compared to one in fifty-six that died from their wounds. One of the main diseases that caused death was continued fevers which 33. 27% of Confederate soldiers who had the illness, died from it2.
Many times the field hospitals that were used to treat the mass amount wounded soldiers were all kept together in tight, unsanitary, and poorly ventilated conditions which caused infections and diseases. Conditions at the soldiers’ camps were poor as well. One of the main causes of disease was poor hygiene because the soldiers did not bathe every day and many times the pots and pans used for cooking, were also used for boiling bug infested clothes for washing.
The term ‘germs’ was unknown so washing hands and bathing were not considered necessary, even for doctors. Trash 1 “Death in the Civil War. ” MrNussbaumcom A FREE Learning World for Kids Teachers and Parents Death in the Civil War Comments.http://mrnussbaum. com/civil-war/death/ (accessed July 27, 2014). 2 Goellnitz, Jenny. “Statistics on the Civil War and Medicine. ” eHistory Archive.
Accessed August 8, 2014. http://ehistory. osu. edu/uscw/features/medicine/cwsurgeon/statistics. cfm. was all around the camp due to lack of a better place to put it which caused for bugs. The soldiers had poor diets because it was hard to find or get fresh vegetables and sometimes all they could get their hands on was spoiled food. The soldiers would drink water from a stream or pond as long as it looked and smelled good, even though many bacteria were still in the water.
The disease known for killing the most soldiers was dysentery which caused severe diarrhea. Second to that was typhoid fever which was spread by different types of bacteria and body lice and would cause high fevers, delirium, rash, and headaches. Scurvy was caused by a lack of vitamins which caused dental damage including spongy gums, loose teeth, and bleeding mouths. Pneumonia and tuberculosis would infect the lungs and were both very contagious. Smallpox was very contagious and dangerous which would cause fever and skin bumps. Other diseases included chicken pox, measles, whooping cough, and mumps.
Even though the main killer of the Civil War was disease, battle caused a great amount of death also. The Union had about 43,000 mortally wounded, meaning they were wounded in battle and died later. The Confederate’s had approximately 94,000 mortally wounded. The most deadly battle of the Civil War was the Battle of Gettysburg in 1863 which killed 23,053 Union troops and 28,063 Confederate troops. There were other causes of death in the Civil War including drowning, suicide, murder, sunstroke, and execution. On the Union side drowning took nearly 5,000 lives, suicide took about 400, and sunstroke killed just over 300. 3.
The amount of lives lost in battle is directly correlated with the advances in weaponry that took place during the Civil War. The first year of war was not one for advances. Most soldiers carried muskets which took time to reload and could only fire effectively up to eighty yards. The Union 3 “Civil War Statistics. ” Civil War Statistics. https://www. phil. muni. cz/~vndrzl/amstudies/civilwar_stats. htm (accessed July 25, 2014). was the first to advance when troops were supplied with rifles which were “quicker to load and put a spin on a bullet, increasing its accuracy and firing range4” but the South was soon to follow in their lead.
The minie ball was a new kind of bullet that was easy to load in a rifle, was more effective, and caused more casualties than the older weapons. The reason for more deaths was because the minie ball caused more tissue damage and widespread wounds which made it difficult for surgeons to handle the intense injuries. There were other advances that were not used as much but could cause great devastation when they were used. For example, the Gatling gun was a wheeled machine gun. Another advance that mostly the South took advantage of was torpedoes which were similar to mines rather than the missiles of today.
One of the largest advances was the use of submarines. In 1864 the Confederates used the Hunley to sink the USS Housatonic. One of the causes of death that is not widely discussed was those who taken prisoner. 56,000 men died in Civil War prisons. Some of the prisoners died from disease, as were the soldiers in the camps, but some died from neglect and starvation. Many inmates died due to “shortages of food, shelter, and clothing5. ” It is said that in the prison camp in Andersonville, Georgia “conditions were so horrid that prisoners were described as walking skeletons. 6” Conditions in 4 Civil War Academy.
“Civil War Technology. ” http://www. civilwaracademy. com/civil-war- technology. html (accessed July 27, 2014). 5 Hall, Yancey. “U. S. Civil War Prison Camps Claimed Thousands. ” National Geographic. July 1, 2003. Accessed August 8, 2014. http://news. nationalgeographic. com/news/2003/07/0701_030701_civilwarprisons. html. 6 “Death in the Civil War. ” MrNussbaumcom A FREE Learning World for Kids Teachers and Parents Death in the Civil War Comments. http://mrnussbaum. com/civil-war/death/ (accessed July 27, 2014).
The prisons were usually more horrible than those on the battlefield and in some of the prisons the death rate was usually 25% or higher. The diets of those in the prisons did not include any fruits of vegetables which led to scurvy and other diseases. Occasionally things would get so bad that inmates would eat rats. There was poor to no sanitation causing many of the diseases that the camps were battling with. One of the diseases not widely discussed was depression which was brought on by the mental struggle soldiers and prisoners took on during the war. The amount of deaths that could have been avoided that were caused by mortal wounds and disease is immeasurable.
If there had been better health practices and safe medical procures from the start of the war it would be easy to assume that the amount of casualties could have been cut in half. Some of the things that we know today were unknown to the doctors of the time. Staffing was limited and was unregulated as to who had appropriate training as a physician and some of them only knew what they had read in a military surgery manual that was written by Dr. Samuel Gress7. Their first experience with surgery often happened right on the battlefield.
There were very few surgeons compared to wounded and sick soldiers and many of the surgeons they did have available got sick because they were not immune to the diseases that were being spread rapidly. The medical practices used in the Civil War were considered to be of the ‘heroic era’. Infection spread quickly between patients due to the fact that doctors did not know that pus from a wound was not a good sign. Doctors would actually take the fluid from one patient and transfer it to those who did not have the pus in their wound, not realizing they were spreading an infection.
Germs were not understood, so knowing how they were spread and carried remained unknown 7 “Medical. ” Civil War Preservation Trust.
Accessed August 9, 2014. www. civilwar. org/… /civil- was-curriculum-medicine. pdf. also. There were no antiseptic medical practices such as cleaning tools and washing hands, equipment far from advanced, and the hospital systems were not well organized. Amputation was a procedure that was frequently used but with unsafe practices and untrained doctors. Amputation was considered to be the most common Civil War surgery. The weaponry advancement of the minie ball caused for many of these amputations because the bullet could destroy not only the tissue but also the bone in the person hit by one of these bullets.
The closer the amputation was to the body the higher the mortality rate was, for example “hip amputations had a mortality rate of about 24%8. ” Amputations were frequent because the amount of wounds to the extremities of the body was about 3 out of 4 wound. In the Union army alone, there were about 30,000 amputations. Amputees had to live with a visual reminder of the war if they made it home to their families. The patients had it rough but so did the surgeons. They would stand over the operating tables for many hours and would not receive any break. They had the mental reminder of men screaming for their families or just out of pain.
The quiet patients looked pale and in a state due the shock. The processes of amputation was a gruesome one. After being wounded in battle, it could be up to two days before you were treated. When the surgery began, the surgeon was wearing dirty, blood stained clothes and using uncleansed tools. If you were lucky his surgical tools had been rinsed off in cold bloody water. Your wound would be cleaned with a sponge that had just been used on the soldier lying next to you, after it had been dropped on the floor a few times. The surgeon would then use either his finger or a probe to find pieces of cloth from your uniform, bone, or the bullet.
If you were lucky the surgeon was finished amputation in ten minutes using a 8 Goellnitz, Jenny. “EHistory. com – Medicine: Civil War Battlefield Surgery. ” EHistory. com – Medicine: Civil War Battlefield Surgery. Accessed August 9, 2014. http://ehistory. osu. edu/uscw/features/medicine/cwsurgeon/amputations. cfm. bone saw. Your removed limb would be tossed into a pile of other limbs lying the corner of the hospital tent. If you healed without getting an infection or illness, you were lucky. Beyond the unsanitary practices and the untrained doctors the hospital systems in themselves were not very good.
They were called haphazard and this is because once the battle was over, the wounded would be taken down railroad lines to cities and towns that were nearby. The hospitals they were taken to were makeshift and treated soldiers from both sides of the war. Amputated limbs and dead bodies would be piled on the floors. The hospitals were so filled that the wounded and sick nearly touched each other. Civil War nurse, Walt Whitman, stated that some of these hospitals were only tents “sometimes very poor ones, the wounded lying on the ground, lucky if their blankets are spread on layers of pine or hemlock twigs, or small leaves9.
” Many times patients who had been wounded through their head, stomach, or chest would be left to one side because they were more likely to die, this let surgeons work on those who could be saved. Part way through the war there started to be some improvements made to the hospital system and medical treatments. Instead of makeshift tents or homes being used as hospitals, field and pavilion hospitals were set up. More efficient systems kept medical records and reports which helped doctors learn and spread knowledge of what worked to help save more lives. A medical journal kept by Surgeon W. A.
Davis10 tells of his treatment of a patient that had his thigh amputated and contracted tetanus. He recorded the treatment he used and how the patient either 9 Dixon, Ina. “Civil War Medicine. ” Council on Foreign Relations. http://www. civilwar. org/education/history/civil-war-medicine/civil-war-medicine. html (accessed July 27, 2014). 10 Davis, W. A. “ART. IV. Case of Tetanus-Recovery. ” Confederate States Medical and Surgical Journal 1, no. 1 (1864). regressed or progressed in health. There were several people at the time who played a key role in the improvement of medicine and hospitals.
Jonathan Letterman, William A. Hammond, and Clara Barton are a few of these people. Letterman was an army medical director and he helped make medical service ordered and efficient by coming up with a regulated ambulance system and plans for those who were wounded and needed to evacuate. Hammond came up with an organized design for new hospital layouts and inspection systems that would help with ventilation and sanitation.
His design became the standard and reduced the mortality rate to 8% for soldiers treated in a hospital designed by him. Along with this he helped saved many lives because he “literally wrote the book on hygiene for the army. 11” Clara Barton, who is the founder of the American Red Cross, brought efficiency to the soldiers on the field. She delivered medical supplies and provided relief and care for wounded soldiers. Some other small advances that were made was to reduce the mortality rate for those soldiers wounded on the battlefield.
One of these ways was that when a soldier had been wounded, medical personnel would give him whiskey for shock, bandage the wound as fast as possible, give morphine for pain, and would evacuate him to a nearby field hospital via ambulance and stretcher system.
The organization of hospitals improved by categorizing patients as either mortally wounded, slightly wounded, and surgical cases. Doctors and nurses began to become more knowledgeable regarding prevention and treatment of diseases, anesthetics, and good surgical practices. 11 Dixon, Ina. “Civil War Medicine. ”
Council on Foreign Relations. http://www. civilwar. org/education/history/civil-war-medicine/civil-war-medicine. html (accessed July 27, 2014). There were many causes of death during the Civil War, although disease was the most deathly one.
Advances in weaponry also took a role in the number of casualties with the development of the minie ball. The medical practices of the times were not at all what we would call safe and sanitary today. The diets and lack of cleanliness of the war camps took the most amount of lives due the diseases contracted and spread. Amputations were common but were not done properly. A combination of these things, and others, lead to advances in medicine and treatments which created a turnaround of amount of casualties due to disease and mortal wounds towards the end of the Civil War.
“Many of America’s modern medical accomplishments have their roots in the legacy of America’s defining war. 12” Works Cited Civil War Academy. “Civil War Technology. ” http://www. civilwaracademy. com/civil-war- technology. html (accessed July 27, 2014). 12 Dixon, Ina. “Civil War Medicine. ” Council on Foreign Relations. http://www. civilwar. org/education/history/civil-war-medicine/civil-war-medicine. html (accessed July 27, 2014). “Civil War Statistics. ” Civil War Statistics. https://www. phil. muni. cz /~vndrzl/amstudies/ civilwar_stats. htm (accessed July 25, 2014). W. A. , Davis “ART. IV.
Case of Tetanus-Recovery. ” Confederate States Medical and Surgical Journal 1, no. 1 (1864). “Death in the Civil War. ” MrNussbaumcom A FREE Learning World for Kids Teachers and Parents Death in the Civil War Comments. http://mrnussbaum. com/civil-war/death/ (accessed July 27, 2014).
Ina, Dixon. “Civil War Medicine. ” Council on Foreign Relations. http://www. civilwar. org/education/history/civil-war-medicine/civil-war-medicine. html (accessed July 27, 2014). Jenny, Goellnitz. “EHistory. com – Medicine: Civil War Battlefield Surgery. ” EHistory. com – Medicine: Civil War Battlefield Surgery. Accessed August 9, 2014.
http://ehistory. osu. edu/uscw/features/medicine/cwsurgeon/amputations. cfm. Jenny, Goellnitz,. “Statistics on the Civil War and Medicine. ” eHistory Archive. Accessed August 8, 2014. http://ehistory. osu. edu/uscw/features/medicine/cwsurgeon/statistics. cfm. Yancey, Hall. “U. S. Civil War Prison Camps Claimed Thousands. ” National Geographic. July 1, 2003. Accessed August 8, 2014. http://news. nationalgeographic. com/news/2003/07/0701_ 030701_civilwarprisons. html. “Medical. ” Civil War Preservation Trust. Accessed August 9, 2014. www. civilwar. org/… /civil- was-curriculum-medicine. pdf.