Any one here a physician? Looking for an expert source for book.

[Jake Patterson]

Looking for an expert source for a book I am writting. Figure I'd give here a try as it's about the Civil War. A physician who is a reenacter would be perfect. Let me know and I'll send specifics.
Jake

 

[BelleBlackburn]

Another resource might be the book Doctoring the South. It is taken from the day books of doctors in the mid 1800s.

 

[Jake Patterson]

Thanks Belle,
What I am searching for is the subject soldier, after surviving many battles and three years of combat, died at Satterlee Hospital of ague and dysentery. From what I can gather it was not an easy death... but one I will need to describe. Thoughts?

 

[101combatvet]

Do you really need that much detail?

 

[Jake Patterson]

Yes.

 

[101combatvet]

I had it so bad that I lost forty pounds in one month.

 

[BelleBlackburn]

I think just a google search on either of those would turn up a lot of info. What do you know thus far? The symptoms should be easy to find. The treatments then - not so effective.

 

[Jake Patterson]

Specifically, Henry lasted for 8 weeks in a hospital. He was healthy going into the illness(es). He admits to ague although he may have had other complications. He describes several symptons in letters home to his parents that I can share if needed.
I am looking for descriptions of the various stages of the illness(es) and the likely medicinal and other therapies to treat.

Also, a current physician's opinions on health care for the soldiers of the time.

I have googled the illness, hospitals of the time and have spoken to several people.

 

[ole]

Back then, people were always getting busted up. Fall off a horse, get kicked by a horse. Fall off a hay rack or get run over by one. A broken arm or leg was a fairly simple matter of realigning it and immobilizing it with a splint until the broken ends rejoined. A broken spine, however, was another matter. We still have trouble with that.

A projectile, however left an open wound -- usually contaminated with dirt and threads of the uniform. If it hit bone, that was the end of it. If there were time to treat the injury, some doctors would have had little trouble maneuvering the bone fragments into a semblance of alignment, and keeping the wound from becoming gangrenous.

But if you're one doctor and you have 100 wounded guys lined up with shattered bones -- amputate.

 

[BelleBlackburn]

You may want to check out that book I mentioned. I have a lot of medicine in my book and it helped enormously. There is also a museum of Civil War Medicine. Maybe shoot them an email and maybe they can hook you up with an expert.

 

[ole]

Diseases? There are so many ailments and so little knowlege of the causes. The prevention of small-pox was known. Pneumonia could be cured, in an otherwise healthy person, with bed-rest and comfort. On the other hand, such simple childhood diseases as measles, mumps and chicken-pox could be devastating when contracted as an adult.

What is now a simple case of the runs was often fatal. Any outbreak was exacerbated by the closeness of camp or barracks.

I grew up in a time when, if a neighbor kid had chicken pox, the mothers would take their kids over to catch it and get it out of the way when it was just a matter of "don't pick the scabs." Apparently the city boys didn't get that. Worked with a guy who got chicken pox from his kids when he was about 36. Darned near killed him. In 1862, it would have.

And that's not beginning to address cholera, typhus, and malaria.

 

[Jake Patterson]

Thanks Belle, I will order the book and contact the CWM Museum.

You may want to check out that book I mentioned. I have a lot of medicine in my book and it helped enormously. There is also a museum of Civil War Medicine. Maybe shoot them an email and maybe they can hook you up with an expert.

 

[BelleBlackburn]

It's probably at the library. The doctors back then seemed to treat everything with bleeding, blistering, purging or arsenic.

 

[James B White]

Thanks Belle,
What I am searching for is the subject soldier, after surviving many battles and three years of combat, died at Satterlee Hospital of ague and dysentery. From what I can gather it was not an easy death... but one I will need to describe. Thoughts?

There are dozens of period medical books online at Google Books. Search for the names of the diseases, limited to say 1855-1865, and you'll get more information than you ever wanted.

Here's an example:
https://www.google.com/search?q=dys...58,d.aWM&fp=42044ac2a119c300&biw=1056&bih=584

Ignore any homeopathic stuff--that wouldn't have been used by a military doctor. Of course you can also add other search terms besides ague or dysentery, such as treatment, opium, laudanum, calomel, symptoms, etc. I'm seeing some hits with titles that include things like military or camp, which would be especially useful.

 

[Nathanb1]

Thanks Belle,
What I am searching for is the subject soldier, after surviving many battles and three years of combat, died at Satterlee Hospital of ague and dysentery. From what I can gather it was not an easy death... but one I will need to describe. Thoughts?

Museum of Civil War Medicine.....Frederick, MD......would be a good bet.

http://www.civilwarmed.org/

 

[damYankee]

I wonder how many we're killed by the treatment the good meaning doctors administered to the patients?
Most drugs of the time used mercury of some form, if the doctors weren't bleeding you they were pumping you full of poison.

 

[James B White]

I wonder how many we're killed by the treatment the good meaning doctors administered to the patients?
Most drugs of the time used mercury of some form, if the doctors weren't bleeding you they were pumping you full of poison.

That complaint became strong enough in the 1820s-1840s era, that alternative medical theories and treatments gave allopaths a run for their money, and eventually forced them to change, by the time of the Civil War. People turned to Thompsonian medicine and similar botanical/herbal/"Indian" offshoots--which were still misguided and full of poisons, but less so than regular medicine--and also to homeopathy with its wildly diluted doses that did little good but little harm either. By the 1860s, regular medicine was much less aggressive than the heroic medicine of Dr. Rush's day half a century earlier.

Looking back from our modern standpoint, it all sort of blurs together into the same thing, but if the goal is to understand the lives of people at the time, they were seeing a noticeable change in their lifetimes, so Civil War medicine was different from what it had been earlier in the century. Just one random example, from a medical book from 1866:

The treatment of gonorrhoeal ophthalmia and of purulent ophthalmia of infants has undergone considerable change of late years. In place of the heroic treatment of former days--leeches by the dozen, low diet, tartarized antimony, &c.,--we frequently see only the mildest forms of treatment pursued, and apparently with great success.

The same thing was happening across the board, on average, with of course many older physicians at one end clinging to older methods, and others like hydropaths on the other end advocating no medicine at all.

 

[pattyjo]

They used something c alled Blue Mass for dysentery didnt they? I may be wrong

 

[maxaman25]

Jake I'm a nurse. In all likelihood the soldier died of dehydration and or malnutrition. That's why we have IV's now. If everything you eat and drink runs right through you then they basically feed you through an IV. This enables us to skip the GI system entirely and put the nutrition and fluid right into the blood stream.

He died in all likelihood because they lacked a relatively simple technology.

Makes you wonder how any of us die today because we lack a simple technology we will have 150 years from now? Oh well...we all have to die someday.

 

[John Hartwell]

You also have to ask just what he means by "ague" -- the meaning of such terms can change over time. The treatmeny of most disease that involved "internal distress" frequently included purging and diuretics, along with keeping the body warm -- so dehydration was, indeed a frequent and fatal complication.

jno