Maggots Post Battles

[Specster]

I have read that lice, bed bugs chiggers, ticks and the ilk were rampant for both sides during the war. I understand that if you were able, you could pull these critters off, to keep them in check to some extent. Yet, if you were incapacitated and had to rely on others for "delousing duty" you may be in for serious trouble.

First off, I want to pose the question, if you were seriously injured in battle, and had mobility or friends, did you go to the field hospital or did you try to find a compassionate homeowner and try to recover w/o "medics". From what I understand the field hospital were rife with disease. The germ theory was not known at the time....there was no attempt to maintain sanitary conditions during amputations. Although strong anesthetics were available, they were not widely used. All things considered, you may have been better off, or just as well off, trying to recover on your own. We have read the stories of piles of arms and legs freshly amputated at a field hospital. (Even tho fiction, "Dances With Wolves" may not have been far from the truth. Walt Whitman wrote about this extensively. He categorized many medics as uncaring and totally unskilled roughians. He made it his goal to care for the injured men.

Which brings me to the maggot, Recently, lab grade maggots have been used to eat away dead flesh with positive result. Oddly enough, even feral maggots are fairly free of bacteria. Maggots are an odd lot. I have recently noted that when an animal is dying, but not showing signs of injury, maggots will sense this and swarm the critter.

Do people think that maggots could have and did play a positive medical role in healing wounds? I understand, even if they did, a line would have had to have been drawn as to when to stop them. All things considered, they may have done more good than harm.

 

[gunny]

I have read that lice, bed bugs chiggers, ticks and the ilk were rampant for both sides during the war. I understand that if you were able, you could pull these critters off, to keep them in check to some extent. Yet, if you were incapacitated and had to rely on others for "delousing duty" you may be in for serious trouble.

First off, I want to pose the question, if you were seriously injured in battle, and had mobility or friends, did you go to the field hospital or did you try to find a compassionate homeowner and try to recover w/o "medics". From what I understand the field hospital were rife with disease. The germ theory was not known at the time....there was no attempt to maintain sanitary conditions during amputations. Although strong anesthetics were available, they were not widely used. All things considered, you may have been better off, or just as well off, trying to recover on your own. We have read the stories of piles of arms and legs freshly amputated at a field hospital. (Even tho fiction, "Dances With Wolves" may not have been far from the truth. Walt Whitman wrote about this extensively. He categorized many medics as uncaring and totally unskilled roughians. He made it his goal to care for the injured men.

Which brings me to the maggot, Recently, lab grade maggots have been used to eat away dead flesh with positive result. Oddly enough, even feral maggots are fairly free of bacteria. Maggots are an odd lot. I have recently noted that when an animal is dying, but not showing signs of injury, maggots will sense this and swarm the critter.

Do people think that maggots could have and did play a positive medical role in healing wounds? I understand, even if they did, a line would have had to have been drawn as to when to stop them. All things considered, they may have done more good than harm.

First, if you were seriously injured in battle there would be no option other than where they took you, but I know of many who were wounded and on the way to recovery when gangrene reared its head. These guys usually got out of the hospital as soon as possible and recovered way in the rear at private homes.

I also know of one guy that was wounded seriously in the leg at Perryville and suffered for two days after the battle till someone found him in a shed. Maggots had infested his wound, but at the same time helped save his life by eating away dead tissue in the interim.

 

[Miles Krisman]

I have read that lice, bed bugs chiggers, ticks and the ilk were rampant for both sides during the war. I understand that if you were able, you could pull these critters off, to keep them in check to some extent. Yet, if you were incapacitated and had to rely on others for "delousing duty" you may be in for serious trouble.

First off, I want to pose the question, if you were seriously injured in battle, and had mobility or friends, did you go to the field hospital or did you try to find a compassionate homeowner and try to recover w/o "medics". From what I understand the field hospital were rife with disease. The germ theory was not known at the time....there was no attempt to maintain sanitary conditions during amputations. Although strong anesthetics were available, they were not widely used. All things considered, you may have been better off, or just as well off, trying to recover on your own. We have read the stories of piles of arms and legs freshly amputated at a field hospital. (Even tho fiction, "Dances With Wolves" may not have been far from the truth. Walt Whitman wrote about this extensively. He categorized many medics as uncaring and totally unskilled roughians. He made it his goal to care for the injured men.

Which brings me to the maggot, Recently, lab grade maggots have been used to eat away dead flesh with positive result. Oddly enough, even feral maggots are fairly free of bacteria. Maggots are an odd lot. I have recently noted that when an animal is dying, but not showing signs of injury, maggots will sense this and swarm the critter.

Do people think that maggots could have and did play a positive medical role in healing wounds? I understand, even if they did, a line would have had to have been drawn as to when to stop them. All things considered, they may have done more good than harm.

From Wikipedia:

Medical treatment
Main article: Maggot therapy
Live maggots of certain species of flies have been applied since antiquity as an effective means of wound debridement. (Use of the wrong species would invite pathological myiasis).[6] In controlled and sterile settings by medical practitioners, maggot therapy introduces live, disinfected maggots into non-healing skin or soft wounds of a human or animal. Currently the only maggots cleared for marketing in the United States are larvae of Calliphorid flies of the species Phaenicia sericata (formerly known as Lucilia sericata).[7] This species of maggots is most widely used in the world as well, but it is unclear if it is the only species cleared for marketing outside of the United States. They feed on the dead or necrotic tissue, leaving sound tissue largely unharmed. Studies have also shown that maggots are used to kill bacteria. There are three midgut lysozymes of P. sericata that have been confirmed to show antibacterial effects in maggot debridement therapy. The study demonstrated that the majority of Gram-positive bacteria were destroyed in vivo within the particular section of the P. sericata midgut where lysozymes are produced. During the passage through the intestine of the maggots, the ability of bacteria to survive drastically decreased, implying the antibacterial action of the three midgut lysozymes.[8] As of 2008, maggot therapy was being used in around 1,000 medical centers in Europe and over 300 medical centers in the United States.[9]

 

[Legion Para]

https://www.galenpress.com/extras/extra31.htm


Maggots and Rats: Nature's Surgeons During the Civil War

By Alfred Jay Bollet, M.D.
From: Civil War Medicine: Challenges and Triumphs
©Galen Press, Ltd., Tucson, AZ, 2002

According to soldiers' letters, swarms of flies harassed them in every encampment and hospital. Because flies deposited their eggs in any open wound or in wounds covered with the standard moist dressings (apparently, the eggs could penetrate through several layers of moist muslin), maggots rapidly appeared in wounds. Although the maggots caused no pain, they disgusted the volunteer female nurses and their wiggling bothered the wounded men. Clinicians, therefore, used oil of turpentine, petroleum, kerosene, tobacco, chloroform, and antiseptics to kill the maggots when flies were present. In well-run hospitals, strict cleanliness usually prevented their appearance.
Yet, some Civil War surgeons ultimately realized that maggots could have beneficial effects: they painlessly cleansed wounds by digesting and removing dead tissue without injuring healthy tissue. Confederate Surgeon Joseph Jones, for example, reported that "a gangrenous wound which had been thoroughly cleansed by maggots healed more rapidly than if it had been left by itself." In recent times, physicians have rediscovered the ability of maggots to debride wounds, often more carefully than the best surgeon.

In her memoirs, Phoebe Pember noted the skill of rats in removing dead tissues in a wound without damaging healthy tissue or hurting the soldier. "The rat surgeons," she noted, "could have passed the [medical examining] board." A Virginian named Patterson was wounded in the center of the instep of a foot; the wound sloughed, and a large mass of "proud flesh" (newly formed growing tissue, now called "granulation") formed an island in its center. According to Pember,

"The surgeons feared to remove the mass, thinking it was connected to the nerves of the foot and lockjaw might ensue. Patterson was very glum, but [after the rats got to his wound, he] brightened one morning, and he exhibited the foot with great glee, the little island gone, and a deep hollow left, but the wound was washed clean and looking healthy."



©Galen Press, Ltd., Tucson, AZ, 2002

 

[Booner]

By eating the dead tissue, the maggots would also reduce the scaring.

 

[Specster]

First, if you were seriously injured in battle there would be no option other than where they took you, but I know of many who were wounded and on the way to recovery when gangrene reared its head. These guys usually got out of the hospital as soon as possible and recovered way in the rear at private homes.

I also know of one guy that was wounded seriously in the leg at Perryville and suffered for two days after the battle till someone found him in a shed. Maggots had infested his wound, but at the same time helped save his life by eating away dead tissue in the interim.

I said in my OP, I wrote: if you had mobility or friends......some soldiers did everything they could to stay out of field hospitals. you had to have had a better chance of survival keeping out of an infectious environment.

 

[Specster]

https://www.galenpress.com/extras/extra31.htm


Maggots and Rats: Nature's Surgeons During the Civil War

By Alfred Jay Bollet, M.D.
From: Civil War Medicine: Challenges and Triumphs
©Galen Press, Ltd., Tucson, AZ, 2002

According to soldiers' letters, swarms of flies harassed them in every encampment and hospital. Because flies deposited their eggs in any open wound or in wounds covered with the standard moist dressings (apparently, the eggs could penetrate through several layers of moist muslin), maggots rapidly appeared in wounds. Although the maggots caused no pain, they disgusted the volunteer female nurses and their
wiggling bothered the wounded men. Clinicians, therefore, used oil of turpentine, petroleum, kerosene, tobacco, chloroform, and antiseptics to kill the maggots when flies were present. In well-run hospitals, strict cleanliness usually prevented their appearance.
Yet, some Civil War surgeons ultimately realized that maggots could have beneficial effects: they painlessly cleansed wounds by digesting and removing dead tissue without injuring healthy tissue. Confederate Surgeon Joseph Jones, for example, reported that "a gangrenous wound which had been thoroughly cleansed by maggots healed more rapidly than if it had been left by itself." In recent times, physicians have rediscovered the ability of maggots to debride wounds, often more carefully than the best surgeon.

In her memoirs, Phoebe Pember noted the skill of rats in removing dead tissues in a wound without damaging healthy tissue or hurting the soldier. "The rat surgeons," she noted, "could have passed the [medical examining] board." A Virginian named Patterson was wounded in the center of the instep of a foot; the wound sloughed, and a large mass of "proud flesh" (newly formed growing tissue, now called "granulation") formed an island in its center. According to Pember,

"The surgeons feared to remove the mass, thinking it was connected to the nerves of the foot and lockjaw might ensue. Patterson was very glum, but [after the rats got to his wound, he] brightened one morning, and he exhibited the foot with great glee, the little island gone, and a deep hollow left, but the wound was washed clean and looking healthy."



©Galen Press, Ltd., Tucson, AZ, 2002

Thanks, this is exactly what I am talking about, not lab grown maggots used today, that is similar but not the same. I did not know about the rats. Very interesting.

Tx

Spec

 

[Poor Sharecropper's Son]

Larvae Livin' Large

 

[civilken]

They may work but boy you have brought back some old memories and I am not ashamed to say it still makes me feel sick when I think of them climbing all over a dead comrade.

 

[major bill]

Probably you best chance at recovery was to go to the hospital. Most commanders would not want to be burdened with wounded men. The men required to care for the wounded would take then away from other duties.

 

[gunny]

Sergeant Carroll Clark had also been transported down to Macon following his severe wounding in the arm. Clark was placed in the Ocmulgee Hospital with a large number of other sick and wounded. He bunked next to a Missourian who had lost both an arm and a leg in the fight on the 22nd. Clark's wound was serious. He was in so much pain—and so uncomfortable—that the doctors made no fuss about administering morphine so that he might get some sleep. It didn't take long for the unsanitary conditions to promote the rampant spread of gangrene. Clark noted that a massive pustule was collecting below the wound, and the looks on the surgeons' faces weren't consoling. He found that his "arm, hand and fingers were terribly swollen." Upon the next doctor's visit, the surgeon told Clark that "amputation was the only remedy." "But I hated to give it up, cried and begged to risk it." The surgeon would not relent. Clark wouldn't either. When the first opportunity arose, Clark—with the assistance of another soldier—made his way to the depot. While the army was stationed at Dalton, Clark had formed an acquaintance with a Mr. Leek. Just before operations around Dalton began, Mr. Leek informed Clark that he was going to refugee to Dawson, Georgia—over ninety miles southwest of Macon. Mr. Leek told him that if he was ever sick or wounded to "go to him." Somehow Clark made it to Dawson, but he arrived "in bad shape." Mr. Leek was informed of Clark's arrival and arranged a comfortable room in his home. When Clark was settled in, Mr. Leek called on his doctor. Later that day, the doctor examined his arm, gave instructions and left morphine. The doctor visited daily, and, "At the proper time he lanced my arm and it began to heal at once."[1]


[1] Clark, Clark Memoirs, p. 24.

 

[Specster]

Probably you best chance at recovery was to go to the hospital. Most commanders would not want to be burdened with wounded men. The men required to care for the wounded would take then away from other duties.

For every one man who died on the field during the ACW, 2 died from disease. If germ theory was know at all, it was know, in its most rudimentary form, to an elite few.

Blood typing, X-rays, antibiotics, medical tests and procedures were nonexistent. "Surgeons" went from patient to patient with bare hands and unsanitized instruments (often saws) spreading disease from one man to the next. stagnant air, dirty water, overflowing chamber pots and latrines, how you can think these were going to increase your odds of living as opposed to be left alone in a semi clean house or even barn?

Beyond hospital issues, I know as the war went on conditions improved somewhat. Commissions were formed to address basic sanitary conditions, like not putting offal, animal carcasses and human waste up stream from what you used for drinking water. Even during the revolutionary war violating latrine orders could and I believe did lead to executions.

 

[Booner]

I seem to remember something about surgeons didn't think a wound was healing unless it had puss discharge. The had a name for it but I can't remember what they, (the surgeons) , called the discharge.

 

[BrrrBRRRR]

I've seen maggots used in hospitals today for wound debriding esp for leg ulcers and I keep rats as pets. They are very good at cleaning their own wounds and their cage mates. On me, they also attempt to clean my wounds as in cuts and calluses off my feet.

 

[JPK Huson 1863]

Oh dear. From maggots to rats. I'm guessing the rats around any wounded men 150 years ago could have been disease carriers? May have negated usefulness as debriding animals? And ouch, probably. That isn't shooting down the concept- am clueless about it, just have always heard rodents spread diseases in those conditions.

Recently listened to several accounts of Gettysburg on audio- narrated books. All accounts equally dreadful speaking of Imboden's train of wounded heading towards Virginia post-battle. The OP asks what would have been preferred, wounded and taken to a house or hospital, what treatment and where. The wounded in that train, if someone had asked, should have been allowed the minor luxury of no being moved. Cavalry riding with them said it was the longest night of their lives. Blood-soaked clothing became stiff, rubbing open wounds, wagons had no shocks or even a layer of straw, no comforts, nothing blocking the rain. Sheer torment, men screaming, if they lived, all the way to Virginia. Someone made the decision for those men, where they would be treated- given the choice a lot would have taken their chances in a Yankee hospital. Hate this story, the 17 mile long train of wounded.

 

[Poor Sharecropper's Son]

I've seen maggots used in hospitals today for wound debriding esp for leg ulcers and I keep rats as pets. They are very good at cleaning their own wounds and their cage mates. On me, they also attempt to clean my wounds as in cuts and calluses off my feet.

Thanks for the insight, Willard !

 

[BrrrBRRRR]

I seem to remember something about surgeons didn't think a wound was healing unless it had puss discharge. The had a name for it but I can't remember what they, (the surgeons) , called the discharge.

Laudable pus is what they called it

 

[major bill]

I have seen maggots in wounded prisoners of war. Not sure I would much want the things in any wound I had. The wounded prisoners did not see real happy with the situation either.