Today’s Shattered Yet Truly Morbid Fact!
Wounds of Gettysburg were a microcosm of all battlefield wounds. Most were caused by projectiles from rifles or muskets, called minié balls. These lead bullets were heavy (.45 and .69 caliber) and traveled relatively slowly, tearing tissue and organs when they struck a body. Bones hit by a minié ball were usually so shattered that they could not be saved. As a result, the shattered limb was typically amputated.
Minié balls
After bullet wounds, injuries from shell fragments caused the second most common type of battle injury. The last wound category, saber blows and bayonets, caused relatively few wounds compared with bullets and shell fragments.
When a soldier was wounded, his first line of care was at a field dressing station. There, a bandage or lint dressing was applied, and whiskey was given for shock and morphine for pain. The injured man was then either returned to battle [wouldn’t that suck? – DeSpair] or transported to a field hospital.
At the field hospital, usually a barn or tent but sometimes just an open field, the wounded were triaged. Wounds to the chest or abdomen usually were considered mortal and treatment consisted of keeping the unfortunate victims as comfortable as possible (usually with opium) until they died.
For those needing surgery, laudanum would often be given before the operation. When laudanum was not available, brandy became an acceptable substitute. The injured was then placed on a makeshift table, the bleeding was controlled, and the wound was probed, usually with the surgeon’s fingers, to remove any foreign objects, including bullet fragments, bits of clothing, or pieces of splintered bone. With no knowledge of sepsis, surgeons rarely washed their hands during extremely busy times, and instruments were rinsed with bloody water. Sponges and cloths were reused. There was little attempt at sanitation as we know it today. Feces, urine, vomit, amputated limbs, and removed internal organs all littered the operating floor.
Anesthesia, which was used in 95 percent of Civil War surgeries, would then be administered. Despite the romantic notion of having the patient bite down on a bullet, it actually was a rare occurrence. Chloroform was the preferred anesthetic, although ether was also used. Smaller dosages of chloroform were needed as opposed to ether, and it had a much more rapid effect. It was also more stable than ether and could be safely used around open flame.
The chloroform was administered by placing the anesthetic on a sponge at the top of a cone and placing the open end of the cone over the patient’s nose and mouth. It was administered gradually to avoid shock. Once the patient was unconscious, the cone was removed. The average time needed for the administration of chloroform was nine minutes.
Ether, on the other hand, took an average of seventeen minutes to work. When it was used, the preferred method of administration was to use a folded towel or bell-shaped sponge that was large enough to cover the nose and mouth. This was then soaked with the anesthetic.
Administering anesthesia
Only a low dose of anesthetic was used during the Civil War, just enough to make the patient insensitive to pain. In some cases, men did not lose consciousness despite the anesthesia. Witnesses reported patients thrashing wildly and shrieking in pain throughout the operation. Adding to the chaos were soldiers begging to be taken next, to relieve their suffering. At the same time, many of those requiring amputation protested vehemently, all adding to the stress of the surgeons.
Three of every four surgeries required amputation, leading to the unfair characterization of surgeons as butchers. As previously noted, the minié ball did such devastating damage that saving a limb, particularly under battlefield hospital conditions and time constraints, was virtually impossible.
Preparing for amputation
Culled from: Bullets and Bandages: The Aid Stations and Field Hospitals at Gettysburg
Holocaust Victims Du Jour
When I visited Bergen-Belsen concentration camp in Germany a few years ago, one of the most poignant exhibits was a wall featuring these intake photographs of Polish prisoners of war from the Warsaw Uprising. The ones that hit the hardest are the smiling women. My thought at the time was they didn’t know what was to come. They still had hope. And it broke my heart.
But now, understanding that they were mostly lieutenants of the uprising, I think they probably knew fully well what was to come but smiled anyway. And that is Defiance.
These photographs were taken on October 10, 1944 at Stalag XI B in Fallingbostel. After the liberation, French POW André Matton, who had worked at the office where the camp register was kept, took the negatives with him to France and gave them to an archive in Auxerre. From there they eventually found their way to Warsaw. This series of photographs shows mostly female officers (marked by an “O” before their registration number). Most of the prisoners wore civilian clothes.
Culled from: Bergen-Belsen