Amputations: The Civil War in Four Minutes
2017 ж. 19 Қыр.
139 882 Рет қаралды
Join Jake Wynn of the National Museum of Civil War Medicine as he explains the protocol of amputations during the Civil War, and how the procedure saved more lives than it cost. Find out how amputations were conducted, what anesthetics were used, and what amputees lives were like after the War.
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I feel sorry for that 5% that didn't get anesthesia.
They just received a quick knockout hammer blow 🤯🤪😵to the head instead
Perhaps they, hopefully, were unconscious to start with. I cannot imagine removing a limb from a conscious patient. Their involuntary movement would make any sort of decent surgery impossible. The surgeons goal was first to save life. Second to do the surgery in a manner to allow recovery and return to to function as well as could be done considering the injury..
It is common in all wars for the losing side's doctors to be stuck in that situation. Happened in both world wars, too. Once you run out of food and ammo, you run out of anesthesia and bandages too. Surgery must go on, but in a horrible degenerated state. There are medieval methods one can resort to: get him blackout drunk, or (gently) throttle him unconscious with a leather strap. The first is better than nothing but won't do a ton of good and may well backfire if he vomits, while the second involves a real risk of killing the guy if the doctor can't get through the bone in a minute or so. The sawing through the bone part is reportedly the intolerably agonizing part. Bone pain is special pain. It would have been highly distressing to even military doctors of the 1800s, since it could be so easily prevented with the medication of the era.
@@jasoncarswell7458 I broke one of the bones in my hand around 1995, and was not able to go to a doctor to get it fixed. So, I wound up splinting it, and wrapping it, and continued going to work without benefit of pain killers. There have been a few pains I've had in my life, but that broken bone was one of the worst (a slight bump could just about cause me to scream). That is only a small idea of what an amputation would have been like for a non-anesthetised patient; but I can have a very real appreciation for how much pain that must have involved. I have massive respect for any soldier who had to go through an amputation while still awake. Those men would have looked at life later on as being easy, I would imagine. Nothing could ever hurt them worse than that awful experience.
I agree. It’s painful to think about. Some used to think whiskey 🥃 was a pain reliever…Ain’t no amount of whiskey 🥃 on this planet to numb that kinda pain.
As a seasoned WC re-enactor (22 years) I never understood how this procedure really progressed so, I learned a lot from this great video. Thank you!
please dont stop posting this awesome videos.... your work is amazing!
Two of my great-great-great Grandpappys lost their legs. One at Fredericksburg, lost his leg to a rifle, he lived. The other just outside of Petersburg, had to have his leg amputated due to a cannon ball, he died.
I'm so very sorry to hear that
Extremely Informative.
Wonderful informative video thank you so much
I read somewhere that a good doctor was a fast doctor and he always carried a sharp knife, a saw and wire cutters and all this was done in unsanitary conditions I guess if infection didn't kill them the shock of getting a limb amputated did and surgery was still in its infancy at that time I guess doctors didn't know the long range outcome of risky surgeries but the surgeries had to be done to save the soldier's life 😔😢
Well that dispelled a few myths...
They would cut the skin higher than the amputation so they could sew it up at the end of the stump, making a pocket around the leftover bone (Like a soft Taco or hot pocket). They did use anesthesia, morphine & opioids for the pain during the Civil War. But just imagine the shock of every saw stroke going through your body without it. Those meds did run out at some point & many soldiers didn't receive it other than whiskey (raw dogged it). Imagine cutting wood with a saw but then it gets stuck and you have to pry it out or muscle it out. That pain would shoot through your entire body & be unbearable. Even if the saw just got stuck for a second It has to come out with force & the pain vibrates through your body. There were many soldiers that could not get the anesthesia but most did. Plus this was happening many hours after the injury, like 24-48hrs after. Imagine the gangrene setting in. Live without a leg or with one that does not work, sometimes they would remove the bone splinters if not that bad but still the limb was not functional. Pick your poison I guess if you wanted to keep the mangled limb without dying from infection, if you're lucky. Just think how much a hang nail hurts LOL! With pain medication & being awake I can only compare from visuals not experience of being like cesareanchild birth, being pulled around like a rag doll while surgeons slice your belly open & pull a child out Braveheart style (You are still awake, medicated but still know your body is being opened & stuff is moving about). God Bless Moms. I've had limb surgery but never awake like child birth, that's unbelievable & impressive.
Tears!!!!
GREAT VIDEO
Surgeons today even say that if they were faced with the overwhelming number of wounded from Civil War battles, amputation would be the primary procedure they'd perform as they'd simply not have time to perform complete reconstructions of shattered bone. The soldiers and surgeons back then knew full well the magical 24 hours after being wounded when infection began to set in.
20,000 amputees in the war on Iraq and Afghanistan, most since the Civil War
They were wars against IEDs and an invisible enemy.
I’d like a presentation on facial and head wound reconstruction
Yes!
Great video
The first knife discussed is actually a Liston knife. The catlin was double-edged.
Liston was a famous British surgeon. He was the first to use anesthesia in England after it was done at Massachusetts general hospital in the USA. His words after the operation were “this Yankee dodge beats Mesmerism hollow” ie he was impressed. Mesmerism has previously been tried as a pain management technique. Liston was a very fast operator which was desirable before the use of ether or chloroform.
how strong was the anesthesia? How much did soldiers feel while their limbs were being amputated?
It's a relief to hear they had way to knock them out for these awful types of surgeries. I wonder with all the procedures they did, was it common to run out of ether etc. I imagine with the opium and morphine that were used to aid with pain, a generation of ex soldiers with addictions sprang up. Everything old is new again!
The video doesn't say WHY amputations were performed though. Modern ammunition also damages bone and tissue, yet we don't need to hack limbs off to save the patient's life. Is it because of infections that Civil War era physicians weren't able to stop? That they were unable to prevent infections from spreading? I feel like the why part is missing here...
wayfaerer320 Most likely, yes. Since gangrene was quick to infect the flesh wounds they probably felt as though cutting off the limb was the fastest and most convenient way to take care of it. Guys we’re getting injured left and right, literally. Doctors didn’t have the time to remove bullets and/or reconstruct damaged tissue. It was the easiest way to keep them alive.
The explanation was given in another video. If surgeons had 20 casualties waiting for surgery they could spend 10 hours in 2 patients condemning the other 18 to a certain dead or amputate and save as many as possible
The grooves in a Minie Ball were grease rings. They were also a wonderful home for bacteria. A wound could go septic very quickly. It's also interesting, that in order to use the "cat gut" that they used for sutures, it had to be boiled to make it pliable. They observed that there were seldom infections at a suture site.
Another reason for so many amputations was the Minnie Ball was a 54 caliber lead bullet. If it hit a bone the bullet would shatter the bone into fragments. It's been said that even today a limb would likely be amputated if the the bone is in such a condition.
The gun ball shattered bones, losing chunks of bones. They had no ability to repair missing bones.
thanks mercy on us.
I'd rather die back then than having to deal with the excruciating pain that these soldiers had to endure with amputating a limb
There was no Gary Sinise accommodated adapted home available to those veterans either.
Minnesota in the civil war
No war no wound
I really feel so sorry about all of the soldiers in the Civil War who had to get a amputation done on their arms or legs and all of the instruments where dirty because they had been used from patient to patient and when they had finished the operation they would simpally wash down the table with a bucket of filthy Warter and then it was ready to be used for another patient and probably the same operation as well it's just really horrible back in those days and the soldiers would end up with hospital infections and gas gangrene because of the poor sanitation of the instruments they had to use on each of the patients it's just horrible what they all went through all those years ago. Thanks everybody and I hope that you like my comment OK cheers.
I’m not so confident with that whole 95% statistic. Surely, it would be safe to understand that not every surgeon during the American Civil War would’ve had enough anesthesia stocked up for all those patients. What about shortages in the Confederacy? I’m not saying anesthesia and cloraform weren’t being widely used, but history has shown us time and time again that armies weren’t always supplied efficiently. How can we be so confident with such a statistic when there were also shortages of food, ammunition, and some cases, even weapons?? That statistic is giving me a little “too good to be true” vibes.
Amputation then was not as sophisticated as you seem to think, at least not compared with modern surgery. Even by the time of WW I, amputation was much better. Unfortunately while the Union Army usually had sufficient anesthetic, the Confederates sometimes didn't. Speed was of the essence and MANY physicians of the time were very poorly trained.
From what I understand anytime you broke a bone at the time it was always amputated because they didnt know how to fix broken bones then. So a broken leg would be taken off I guess
That probably was true for a compound fracture.
If one happened to be shot the soldiers where killed the surgeons could do nothing for them since they didn't have the technology a gut shot is always fatal
Minie Ball Not mini ball
My God , that’s a horrific job to do day in day out
jah
Just gotta hope the bullet goes through
That's f***** up man
Isn't war Great! You get shot by a big lead ball..your arms shattered..but no worries ..I got some elixir and a bone saw..you didn't need that arm anyway..💀💀
iF YOU WERE A wAR hERO THE STORY WILL BE TOLD WITH NO ANESTETIA FOR EFFECT.
I am definitely against amputations.
The ball hitting the bone would shatter it into many pieces. Wasn't much of a choice left unfortunately.
You wouldn't be if you needed one to save your life.
And how do the Liberals thank these Brave Confederate soldiers by taking down Confederate statues and monuments and the Confederate flag. These men basically died for nothing is what you're saying?
Anthony C ...no. They died for a cause, that cause being mainly the right to own human beings as property. The men who took up arms against the United States of America were traitors plain and simple. This does not mean they should be forgotten, but nor should they be honored. As a veteran and an American, I find it disturbing that schools, streets, and even U.S. military installations are named in honor of traitors who caused much destruction, pain, and death among their countrymen. Relegate all these second place trophies to museums and the battlefields of this terrible war as reminders of the consequences of treason, hubris, stubbornness, and fanaticism.
At 0:17 Why would you minimize the importance of the American Civil War by calling it a "conflict"? You're disgraceful for saying such a thing and you should be ashamed. It was a full blown war, not just a conflict.
War is a military conflict - thus a conflict.