Soldiers Fight the Nazi

“For every three soldiers killed in battle, five more died of disease.”. Soldiers obtained many diseases that affected them mentally and physically. Some of these diseases were measles, malaria, or even smallpox. Most of these diseases were transmitted because of lack of hygiene, insects, and lack of food. In the war there was such a need for doctors because of the enormous amount of infected soldiers. Doctors during the civil war had little to no education because they did not pursue medical studies at the time. Many of the doctors at the time had never even seen a battle scar on a patient because they worked on the smaller things such as headaches and minor burns. Most doctors never performed surgery but because of the major need of doctors untrained students were called to treat soldiers. Even though the medicine, surgeries, and methods doctors used in the civil war were savage it still made a way for us to make modern medicine and develop new techniques to mold the future ways of medicine.

In the war there were many surgeries but the most common surgery was an amputation. Many peoples perspectives of the surgeons who performed the surgeries became harsh and rude because the easiest and fastest surgery was amputation. May i remind you that these surgeons were students who most of the time did not have more than 2 years of studies. This is stated by the medical director of the potomac when he said, “It is not to be supposed that there were no incompetent surgeons in the army. It is certainly true that there were; but these sweeping denunciations against a class of men who will favorably compare with the military surgeons of any country, because of the incompetency and short-comings of a few, are wrong, and do injustice to a body of men who have labored faithfully and well.”.

The sick and wounded needed a way to get evacuated out of that area while getting treatment or else they would most likely die. This brought up the idea of hospital ships but the idea began to become chaotic. This is because the captains and quartermasters leading these ships had medicine and medical duties as a low priority. Another thing to make this idea go under is that the ships had little medical personnels working the trips and lacked the materials and supplies needed to take care or treat the patients. As people started to complain the army and navy began to make ships to primarily act as hospital ships. “The biggest and best ships were literally floating hospitals, outfitted with hundreds of regular hospital beds organized into wards; operating rooms; and quarters for a full complement of surgeons, doctors and nurses.”. These multiple ships helped prevent lots of deaths.

One of the other very helpful hospitals were the hospital trains. Matter of fact the reason hospital trains were made is because of the first railroad war which was in the civil war. These trains were mainly used to transport men and materials such as weapon, food, and clothing. The one other main reason they used these trains was to move the hurt soldiers to the stationary hospitals. Same enough as how the hospital ships started off with chaos this did too.

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