HIS 131 - American History I: Civil War Medicine

The sectionalism of the Civil War did not affect the broad views of manhood, although competing ideologies of manhood existed in the South and in the West. The increasing role of women, overlooked historically for years, the burgeoning middle class, and the evolving role of men all contributed to the development of Victorian-era manhood.
Concepts such as honor, duty, and male independence, as well as a connection to the Revolutionary forefathers, permeated among northern and southern white males.

First is the 55th Massachusetts Volunteer Infantry Regiment; next the practice of medicine in the Civil War armies; and, finally, the career of a noted scientist, Burt Green Wilder. Despite the often-repeated fact that more Civil War soldiers died of disease than in battle, the subject of medical treatment, less glamorous than battles and strategy, has been relatively overlooked.

During the U.S. Civil War surgeons performed a vast number of surgeries. Whether surgery increased wounded soldiers’ chances of survival has been debated ever since.

The advent of general inhalation anesthesia, in the form of ether (1846) or chloroform (1847), revolutionized medicine for surgeons and patients. Its efficacy in wartime was quickly tested in the Civil War, establishing that painless surgery on the battlefield might be possible.