The Medicine of the Civil War

By: David Edwards

At the beginning of the Civil War, the U.S. Army had a medical units of 98 surgeons and assistant surgeons. No one called physicians doctors in those days, they were all called surgeons. The surgeons had about 20 clinical thermometers, and didn't have a "modern" microscope until 1863. No one really knew what technology could do in the medicine world. No surgeon used syringes to give medicine. Instead, morphine, the leading pain-killing drug of the time, was rubbed or dusted into the wound. Sometimes it was also given in the form of pills. They had no idea what addiction was, and so many soldiers came home from the war addicted to opium. Fortunately for these poor soldiers, opium was available at every self-respecting local pharmacy.

And so was the sorry state of medicine at this time in American.