Essay On Civil War Medicine

Words: 632
Pages: 3

Imagine waking up with the common cold or even a fever, without a cure. You lay for days, sick, on the brink of death. You pray for relief, but medicine isn’t advanced enough to help you. This event can be avoided due to the civil war’s demand for advanced medicine, which in fact, sped up the medical discovery process. The Civil War’s effect on medicine in the 21st century is very important. Without the medical advancements found at that time we could be suffering worse effects for some illnesses that seem harmless. Because of this war, we have medicine today to treat some chronic diseases that had a rare survival rate hundreds of years ago. The medics of that time came up with great ideas like amputations to save people, anesthesia inhalers, and the ambulance to ER system. Without the civil war’s demand for better healthcare, the medicine we know today …show more content…
This civil war innovation helps was created to help injured people get back to the medical tents. Today, they are much more advanced and have laws to get the victims to the hospital faster by cutting through traffic and sirens to alert nearby drivers. As Ina Dixon from Civilwar.org stated “Jonathan Letterman, the Medical Director of the Army of the Potomac, brought ‘order and efficiency in to the Medical Service’ with a regulated ambulance system and evacuation plans for the wounded.” This shows that it was a method created for efficiency which played a big role in the civil war and now.

In conclusion, the civil war has proved to be an important part in medical history. That era has brought innovations to the 21st century that have helped so many people like amputations to save people from life threatening infections and wounds, anesthesia to relax and stabilize the patients, and an ambulance system for immediate care to the victim. Can you imagine life without advanced medical