Treatment
Civil War doctors were commonly called 'butchers' and 'sawbones' for their harsh treatment methods. Once a wounded soldier was brought in, every effort was made to get him treated within 48 hours. Primary care was administered at field hospitals. The first stop was the dressing station where wounds were examined, staunched, and bandaged. Bandages and the little water available to wash wounds were often dirty. Some doctors still bled patients.
If necessary, more serious operations were performed. The operation table was typically just a rubber sheet on top of a regular table. Surgeons had to amputate, tie arteries, tie tourniquets, and dress wounds. The tools generally used included scalpels, amputation knives and saws, tourniquets, and bullet probes. They went days without washing their hands or instruments, because there was not enough water. They held knives in their teeth and wiped them on their trousers. The only sterilization agent available was water, and not very often. The infection thus caused were 'surgical fevers', and about 20% of operations led to gangrene.
We were poorly supplied with dressings and comforts for the wounded and with ambulances for their transportation, and it was several days after the battle before all could be brought in. Our principal difficulty, however, in providing for the wounded, was in the utter impossibility to obtain proper details of men to nurse them and to cook and attend generally to their wants, and in the impossibility of getting a sufficient number of tents pitched, or in the confusion which prevailed during and after the battle to get hay or straw as bedding for the wounded or to have it transported to the tents.
- Surgeon R. Murray, after the Battle of Shiloh