1. Inside of a civil war
hospital
At the beginning of the civil war, hospitals were unsanitary
and crowded. However as time went on people tried to fix
some issues that could save lives. William Hammond, for
example, created ventilated systems that kept diseases from
spreading and an inspection plan, that every hospital had to
pass in order to operate. Soon, hospitals were in ship shape.
2. The Union army had only 98 doctors registered. The
confederacy had 24. Both sides were accepting anyone who
applied for the job. All that the new doctors had to go off of was
a little book called, "the practice of surgery."
3. Overcrowding
• Overcrowding was a serious
issue in hospitals. Sometimes
patients had to be kept outside
in the heat.
• Hospitals were often set up in
old houses or barns; places
that were not equipped to care
for the wounded.
• At the Battle of Gettysburg,
there were so many wounded
soldiers, every building in a ten
mile radius housed dying men.
4. Walt Whitman's visit
A famous poet named Walt Whitman visited
some civil war hospitals and wrote about all that
he saw. At some hospitals Whitman said soldiers
were lucky if they laid on a blanket that had
padding of pine, twigs, or leaves underneath. At
the hospital of the army of the Potomac, in
Falmouth, Virginia, he noted that there was a
heap of amputated limbs big enough to fill a cart
full.
6. If you were going to have surgery, your operating table
would most likely be an old door with two barrels
underneath. This "table" wasn't cleaned in between patients
so it was covered in blood and fifth from the patient before
you whose limb was chopped off with a saw.
7. Facts
-To be a doctor in the civil war you
only had to take 2 years of medical
school
-operating rooms were stationed
closest to the outdoors so the
surgeons had plenty of light.
- assistants held lamps over the
operating table when performing
surgery at night.
