Saturday, January 13, 2018

Medical Treatment in the Old West




In the Old West, there were plenty of ways to die, including snake bites, bullet wounds, STDs, dysentery, rabies, childbirth, and Malaria (known as ague) along with a host of other diseases or accidental injuries.

Prior to the Civil War, poor people had a better chance of surviving sickness or injury than their ritzier neighbors. Doctors of that time, if they were trained at all, tended to bleed their patients to balance the humoral systems of the body, up to as much as a pint per day. Not only had they never heard of a germ, none of them even grasped the rudimentary basics of personal hygiene. Physicians would never think of washing their hands or sterilizing their instruments before working on a person. A pre-Civil War patient was better off using home remedies than making a trip to the doctor in town.


Battle of Spottsylvania in Virginia byThure de Thulstrup

The Civil War changed medical treatment forever and ushered in what we think of now as the modern era of medicine. More than 12,000 physicians treated millions of soldiers on the battlefield during the conflict between the North and South from 1861 to 1865. Bleeding a man with leeches while he was already bleeding from a ghastly bullet wound didn’t make much sense, so doctors veered off the track of traditional medicine and got creative. Amputation became the norm to stave off infection, but doctors also gained insight that would help save future patients and their limbs.

Before the Civil War, anyone could hang out a shingle as a doctor, and in the Old West, frontier medicine was often administered by quacks peddling snake-oil and unregulated opiate drugs. Many of them were unsavory characters hiding out in small towns. Native American medicine men knew more about healing the body than the average doctor.
When the War Between the States broke out, the qualifications for becoming an army doctor or surgeon were minimal. But in 1862, a revolution in medicine was set in motion by U.S. Surgeon General William Hammond. He made it a requirement that all military physicians receive training in public health, hygiene, and surgery.

Then he sent out an odd, yet revolutionary request to all field medical personnel in the Union Army to forward any notes or specimens of morbid anatomy that might add to the knowledge base in the practice of military medicine and surgery. Rather than basing medicine on accepted tradition, i.e. bloodletting, Hammond ushered in medical treatment based on evidence. The samples he collected provided case studies to train and prepare doctors during and after the war.

After the Civil War, rather than returning home, many of those battlefield-trained doctors headed west and set up offices along the way. They trained other physicians and medical assistants and practiced the new methods they had learned during the war.

Gunshot wounds, which often became infected and led to amputation or death, were treated post-Civil War by leaving the wound open and cleaning it regularly until new skin developed, rather than amputating or taking out the bullet and then sewing up the patient, which led to infection.

The knowledge gained on Civil War battlefields saved countless lives in the years to come in the Old West.



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My hero Buck McKean suffers a gunshot wound in my upcoming historical romance novel Dreams of My Heart, book 1 of The Reluctant Brides series that releases April 1, 2018 from Mountain Brook Ink. Thankfully, the doctor who treats him in my story set in Deer Lodge, Montana Territory was a battlefield surgeon during the Civil War.





After more than twenty years spent acquiring and editing books by numerous bestselling Christian authors, Barbara J. Scott has returned to her true love—writing. Barbara and her husband Mike live in the Nashville area, where sweet tea is a food staple, with their two Chihuahuas, Riley and Sissy, both rescued from puppy mills. Reading, writing, and research are her passions. Want to know more? Connect with Barbara at www.BarbaraJScott.com.




16 comments:

  1. Yes, medicine surely has come a long way from its' humble beginnings. Thanks for the post!

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    1. Makes me wonder what new treatments will be available in the 22nd century, Connie. It's amazing how far we've come since the Civil War!

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  2. Thank you for sharing your very interesting post!

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  3. I didn't know about how Surgeon General Hammond made such revolutionary changes in medicine. Praise God he did.

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    1. Amen! But he was drummed out of office over one of his innovations. Even though he was later proved to be right, doctors of the day revolted, and Hammond was discredited.

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    2. Not really an innovation, but banning a medicine being used that contained mercury.

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  4. Thanks for your very interesting post. We are blessed to be on the receiving line of those who fought for medical advances in the past.

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    1. We certainly are. When I was a child, polio was a scourge. Then the polio vaccine was invented, and we stood in a line for blocks to receive the shot. Now we have CT scans, MRIs, and DNA treatments. How far we've come!

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  5. It's good to know that something good came out of the Civil War, the end of bloodletting. Thanks for the insight into the background of your novel. I'm looking forward to its release.

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  6. Thanks for stopping by, Janalyn! Did you know that about 50,000 men were killed at just the Battle of Gettysburg? Can you imagine? There were about that many who perished in the entire Vietnam War.

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  7. A wonderful post about medical treatment changes as a result of the Civil War. Thank you for sharing. I worked in the medical field in the past, and it's astonishing all the advances in the last 10 years even.

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    1. Thank you for stopping by, Marilyn! Since you've worked in the medical field, you have a unique insight into how far we've advanced since the Civil War.

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  8. Fascinating post! The heroine in the 3rd book of my Natchez Trace Novel series is a healer-in-training. The series in set in the 1790s, so I'm having to be creative with what she and her mentor can use and how.

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  9. Hi Pam! I can't wait to read your book about a healer-in-training. Let me know when it releases. When I was researching another WIP, I learned women were involved in the medical arts long before I knew. According to Wikipedia, Elizabeth Gooking Greenleaf (November 11, 1681 – November 11, 1762) was the first female apothecary in the Thirteen Colonies. Evidently, Massachusetts had no law against the practice. I find that fascinating!

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  10. Great post, Barb!

    My current series is set during the Civil War, and one of the main characters is a medic, learning as he works in a hospital in the Washington area. The information you've shared will be invaluable! Thanks!

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