My group and i are trying to decide what to do for a video that is informative and funny/ interesting. It HAS to be on field hospitals. (We have to make the video ourselves.) PLEASE HELP!!!!!!!!
Mark
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got this from site hope it helps if u need more lol email me
As the records of the Confederate hospitals were burned in the surgeon-general's office at the fall of Richmond, it is difficult at this date to write of their work. But, from the writer's own experience and the accounts of others engaged in the work, it is possible to show something of what was attempted and accomplished in the face of difficulties which seemed insurmountable.
After some preliminary hospital experience at Hot Springs, and Bath Alum Springs, Virginia, I reported, in March, 1862, to Doctor S. H. Stout, who was just beginning his invaluable services as medical director of the hospitals of the Department and Army of Tennessee. Preferring active service, I was assigned to the Twentieth Regiment, Tennessee Infantry, with which I remained until paroled, after General J. E. Johnston's surrender.
On the morning of December 1, 1864, I received orders to go to Franklin, Tennessee, and make arrangements for the wounded of General Bate's division. I did so, taking with me my hospital steward, a detail of ten men, and two wagons. I found an old carriage- and wagon-shop about sixty by one hundred feet, two stories high. It had a good roof, plenty of windows above and below, an incline leading up to the upper floor on the outside, and a good well. This I immediately placarded as " Bate's Division Hospital," and put part of the detail to work cleaning out the work-benches, old lumber, and other debris.
Further up the same street, I found an unoccupied brick store, two stories high, eighty by twenty feet, and, on the corner of the square, the Chancery Court room, about forty feet square, both of which I took possession of, and put the remainder of the detail at work cleaning out the counters, shelving, empty boxes, and barrels from the one, and the desk, or rostrum, and benches from the other, sending the wagons into the country for clean straw.
Two assistant surgeons with additional detailed men reported to me and all worked diligently, so that, by the middle of the afternoon, the buildings were fairly well cleaned. The wagons did not have to go far afield, and each floor was soon covered with clean wheat-straw ten or twelve inches deep; and before midnight all the wounded were transferred from the field-hospital.
The provisional Army of Tennessee was at first, to some extent, supplied with spring vehicles as ambulances ; but as the war progressed, hard usage and rough roads caused them to break down, and they were abandoned. Their places were supplied by ordinary wagons drawn by two mules and without springs. Staples on the sides of the body secured white-oak bows, covered with heavy cotton-duck cloth, with the name of the regiment, brigade, division, and corps painted on the sides of the white cover.
While such ambulances afforded somewhat rough riding for sick and wounded men, they were the best that could be supplied. Now and then, one or more well-built and equipped ambulances were captured; in which case it did not take long to convert the " U " into a " C," leaving the " S " and "A" painted on it in some Northern city, still on duty; but these were generally taken possession of by brigade, division, or corps headquarters, leaving the regiments to rely on the two-horse wagons.
I had kept with me my regimental medicine chest, amputating and pocket-case instrument, and the as had their own pocket instruments. The division commissary left us three days' rations of beef and meal per man, but I had no further occasion to call on our commissariat for supplies, as the good people of Franklin and vicinity brought in an abundance of everything that sick, wounded, and attendants could desire from day to day-well-cooked bread, beef, mutton, chickens, turkeys, milk, butter, eggs, and other food.
Several carpenters in my detail were put to work constructing rough bunks of such lumber as could be found, placing in them the more severely wounded. By the end of my first week's service, I had permitted about one-third of the wounded to take up their quarters in the residences of willing citizens of the town and immediate vicinity. Those who could do so were required to report at the hospital every day, or on alternate days, and one of the assistant surgeons or myself visited, from time to time, such as could not walk to the hospital. Nearly all of these " out-patients," as well as some others in my hospital, went south with Hood's battered battalions as they retreated beyond the Tennessee River in the days following December 17,1864.
In my hospital, while at Franklin, only seven men died; two from abdominal wounds, three from gunshot wounds in the head, one with amputation of thigh, and one who refused to submit to amputation - I never amputated a limb without consent of the wounded man-after the nature of his case had been fully explained to him. Despite all arguments and reasoning, this man refused amputation, was greatly depressed and despondent from the first, and died on December 23d, as I had expected, from gunshot injury to forearm, complicated by nostalgia and despondency in an old man.
Largely predominating on both sides were the wounds inflicted by the rifled musket, carrying its conical ball of an ounce or more in weight. These wounds differed in some important and very material characteristics from all gunshot wounds in preceding wars, including that with Mexico ; as well as those in our later experience with Spain, and those inflicted by the improved army-gun of the present day. The old round ball, of low velocity, caused many fractures in bones of the extremities. But it never produced such shattering, comminution, and amount of bone destruction and injury as did the heavy conical ball of increased velocity-both differing in character from the Mauser and Martini of the present day with their still greater increase of velocity-and its hardened or steel-jacketed projectile of smaller caliber, which often makes an almost clean-cut perforation, even through the shaft of a long bone.
The shattering, splintering, and splitting of a long bone by the impact of the minie or Enfield ball were, in many instances, both remarkable and frightful, and early experience taught surgeons that amputation was the only means of saving life. In the vicinity of a joint, the ends of the bone being more spongy, softer, and less brittle, the damage to the shaft of the bone was not so great, and the expedient of resection, largely resorted to and greatly developed by the surgeons, in many instances afforded a comparatively, if not perfectly, restored limb. Resections of the upper extremity afforded better results than those of the lower, although fairly good results were sometimes obtained in the case of the latter.
In some instances, I deemed it imperatively necessary to resort to a second, or even a third resection of the limb, even after the end of the bone had been sawn through, and while the patient was still under the influence of the anesthetic, the primary section furnishing the information that the bone had been shattered, splintered, or split higher up than could be ascertained at first. Conservative surgery was, I might say, almost, if not entirely, a universal principle with the Confederate surgeon; conservatism, first, as to the life of the wounded soldier, secondly, as to his future comfort and usefulness.