Medical Revolutions :: essays research papers

The Civil War started as a piece of cake and ended in compassion, but in between were four fearful years of twisted flesh, burning fevers, rampant pus, and oozing raw stumps. neer before had America faced even a hint of much(prenominal) agony and the way it responded to the occasion is fascinating history. In a truly real sense the War Between the States brought forth a checkup revolution and, perhaps above all, an awareness of public health. The terrible, swift scalpel became little terrible and the dank, dirty, dingy pesthouse evolved into a pavilion of hope. Nursing, dentistry, and pharmacy withal experienced a renaissance and the art and science of military medicament was projected into the future.The man of medicine who served in the Civil War was, whether he liked it or not, first and fore roughly a surgeon and continuously referred to as such. Though his first knife may well exact been government issued, he learned the tricks of the trade in due guide and sometimes became quite an expert. Do your best was the general idea, and most surgeons did, or at least tried and true.Nearly all the older doctors had received their culture on an apprenticeship basis but the younger men, those who made up the lot of the army surgeons, usually held a medical school diploma along with an office internship. Little attention was paid to clinical instruction, and in most cases the laboratory was all but forgotten. Further, stethoscopes, thermometers, syringes, and the like were widely used in Europe while galore(postnominal) doctors here at home had neer seen them let alone used them.In regard to ability and competence, there is no reason to believe the doctors in the North and the South differed in any significant way. While the North was home to more esteemed medical institutions, the South was learning to become less dependent on the North in this area at the outbreak of the war. A occur of schools became established. Whether good, bad, or indifferen t, the doctors were needed and just about every device was tried to keep up supply, a task compounded by shop at absenteeism. This situation was by no means peculiar to the medical people, for many others in the Civil War had the habit of picking up their blankets and straits back to the old homestead. This is exactly the case for Inman in the novel, Cold Mountain, by Carles Frazier.