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Civil War Medicine

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According to most modern statistics, the first world war resulted in the combined deaths of almost 10 million soldiers out of about 65 million died, most of which died during battle, unlike most previous wars during which most died of disease, and 1/3rd of those deaths were caused by an outbreak of Spanish flu, killing more people in one year than did the black plague in four. Contrastingly, the American civil war caused almost a million deaths or more than 2 percent of the entire population of the entire north American continent at the time as opposed to little more than 1 percent of all of the armies put together, not counting civilians. The number of casualties from world war 1 and many others afterwards could have been much larger, but …show more content…
In commencement, the rapid advancement of medicine helped with both the decrease in death rates during the war and the societal and cultural development in the US, then and now. As shown in an article by Yale trained historian Paul Stepanski when he states: “The American Civil War witnessed the further development of field hospitals and the acceptance, often grudging, especially among southern surgeons, of female nurses tending to savaged male bodies. Hospital-based training programs for nurses were a product of wartime experience”. As this quote eloquently shows, the evolution of field medicine during the civil war, world war 1 and beyond helped, not only the injured, but, also, the improvement of gender equality; and this helped the women suffrage movement in the US and in extension, the 18th amendment. In supplement, there were many innovations in general medicine and surgery, as described by Stepanski when he states: “there were the advances, surgical and technological, in amputation. They included the use of the flexible chain saw to spare nerves and muscles and even, in many cases of comminuted fracture, to avoid amputation entirely. The development of more …show more content…
(Chauchat). Motorized vehicles were first commonly seen in World War 1; one of the greatest accomplishments for the US during the war was their mass production of the Liberty Engine or the Liberty L-12 was an American 27-litre water-cooled 45° V-12 aircraft engine of 400 HP designed for a high power-to-weight ratio and ease of mass production. It was succeeded by the Packard 1A-2500; this engine was light but put out a lot of horsepower. Another vehicle that was new to the war was planes. These were used mostly to scout out the enemies, but some also carried guns. An additional major vehicle of the war was the tank. The tank was at first used mainly to cross areas, such as “no-man’s land”, of the Western Front. By the end of the war a more modern tank was developed that had a revolving turret. The flame thrower was one of the most famous weapons of the time. Flame Throwers date back as far as the 5th century, but World War 1 brought about the first portable flamethrower. The weapon brought extreme fear to opposition at the beginning of the war as it was something that had never been seen before. The first to use this terrifying method were the Germans, but by the end of the war flamethrowers had even been added to tanks. (Lenhardt). Another form of warfare that was reinvented, or revived

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