Medicine on the Battlefield Near Gettysburg Essay Example

help their injuries.

Kilrain was shot under the shoulder and bled out a lot to the point where he could have died but ended up just applying pressure to the wound to prevent the bleeding. Weakness cane from the loss of blood. The treatment for this during the war would be to just amputate the wounded area whereas today for this type of injury they might have just added some stitches and put the arm in a spleen.(pgs.218-219)

Another one of these men was John Buford. Buford was a major general on the Confederacy’s side. He was an admired,experienced leader. Buford was shot in the knee. Most of the shots in the civil war were made by a minie bullet, the thing about these bullets was that they were able to shatter bones in seconds. These wounds left doctors no option then to amputate now a days they would probably be given surgery then a cast or a type of prosthetic.(pgs 146-147)

The last man I will talk about is Robert E. Lee. Lee was a tall,honest,dependable general who worked on the south side. Lee was diagnosed with a heart condition which made him have chest pains, dizziness, and shortness of breath as well as being weaker. Back then there was nothing that could be done to help this but now there is, there is heart transplants, medicinal drugs, and cardiac rehab.( pgs 73-74)

These men all survived luckily it was rare since this had been such a rough time for everyone involved in this tragedy. For every three soldiers killed in battle, five more died of disease. Because the medicine of the Civil War was not as advanced

meant that many wounds and illnesses were unnecessarily fatal.