War Medical History

Misconceptions about the brutality of military medicine in the Civil War often come from myths concluding that amputations, as well as common surgeries, were executed carelessly. Doctors were dealing with mass injuries that the world had never dealt with before. In the years before the war began, “Surgeons at one of the premier hospitals of the time, Massachusetts General Hospital were performing fewer than 200 surgical procedures of any kind on average per year” (Bishop). Within the first few months of the start of the war doctors who had no prior surgical experience were exceeding the number of procedures preformed by hospital experts in a matter of days (Barnes). By the end of the war, Union doctors had recorded almost 30,000 amputations
Like Confederate doctor John Chilsolm, many surgeons and medical aids kept close records of surgeries to learn and expand from past mistakes and triumphs. The meticulous accounts of early and evolved surgeries show us the colossal progress surgeons made in their techniques over the course of the war and their hope that it would help future physicians. For example, the six-volume Medical and Surgical History of the War of the Rebellion published by the Surgeon General’s Office just after the war ended gives extensive statistical data of the war. The records detail the number of men who survived to reach medical care, which improved by over 10% by the second year. Countless personal journals written by members of all ranks of the medical staff provide a broad range of information on everyday medical treatment. On April 2, 1863 Jonah Franklin Dyer, acting medical director of the II Corps of the Army of Potomac, wrote in his personal records “I am to have a drill of the ambulances belonging to the division this afternoon, for the purpose of instructing the men in their duties” (Franklin, 68). Much of his accounts go into detail of the processes that were implemented to make organization of the sick and injured men easier and more reliable. As the head of the II Corps, most of his work was overseeing the tasks of other men and instructing them on their work with the wounded. The diary of Amanda Akin Stearns was published in 1909 after she agreed that her memories could help preserve the lessons learned in war. During her time as a nurse, Akin wrote to her family often. In 1863 on her first evening in Armory Square Hospital she wrote, “I meekly followed through the long ward…and with a sinking heart watch the head of a poor fellow in the last stages of typhoid” (Stearns, 39). Her published diary provides a glimpse of what life was like when