To give you an idea of how far medicine has come, look at this:

[Goro]

Newly Discovered ‘Limb Pit’ Reveals Civil War Surgeons’ Bitter Choices

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[OrthoTraumaMD]

Amazing...my predecessors’ work.


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[Raney Schauer]

If you're in Philadelphia, stop by the Mutter medical museum if you get the chance. They have a section on Civil War surgery that's pretty fascinating. Video presentation, instruments of the time, photos... it's a good time.

 

[OrthoTraumaMD]

If you're in Philadelphia, stop by the Mutter medical museum if you get the chance. They have a section on Civil War surgery that's pretty fascinating. Video presentation, instruments of the time, photos... it's a good time.

Was just there a month ago


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[7331poas]

Check out this picture gallery if you haven't already seen it.

 

[Poit]

I'm curious why amputations helped prevent infection? Aren't you just substituting one wound for another? Perhaps because the bullet could serve as a nidus for infection? It's not as if they knew that, though.

 

[deleted103644]

I'm curious why amputations helped prevent infection? Aren't you just substituting one wound for another? Perhaps because the bullet could serve as a nidus for infection? It's not as if they knew that, though.

Pretty sure it wasn’t prevention - they would cut off infected limbs. Would be nice if they cleaned the blades between patients, but who had the time for that?

Even older cases:

11th - 6th century BC, evidence of healing (so patient survived) and likely some kind of anesthetic used.

Evidence of successful brain surgery and ancient pharmaceutical warehouse found in Turkey

 

[OrthoTraumaMD]

I'm curious why amputations helped prevent infection? Aren't you just substituting one wound for another? Perhaps because the bullet could serve as a nidus for infection? It's not as if they knew that, though.

Actually they did know some things about infection (such as that you could spread it, which is why isolation wards and separate surgical dressings and gauze for infected patients were a thing) without knowing about germs. We now know that soft tissue injury predisposes to infection, but you are right that they did not know that at the time. Likely the reason to cut it off was one of three:
1) obvious loss of function (mangled limb)
2) existing infection (all wounds were “expected” to be infected at the time, and pus was seen as a good thing)
3) controlling bleeding (in the acute setting this was probably the most common reason). Primitive tourniquets were used during that time. We still amputate today in true life-over-limb fashion if bleeding can’t be controlled and the patient’s physiology is unable to compensate.


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[Gorne]

Incredible.

 

[neusu]

The history of medicine, and how we got where we did, and where we came from to get where we are now, has always fascinated me.