Neither the Union nor the Confederacy was prepared to
care for the massive numbers of sick and wounded which
occurred at the onset of the Civil War. While their surgeons
benefited from the knowledge gained during the Crimean War
regarding the cleanliness of military hospitals, the isolation
of infection, and the use of the new general anesthetics, no
facilities for their use existed in America.
The Confederate Chief Surgeon, Samuel Preston Moore, had
no entrenched medical bureaucracy to battle. By early 1862
he had formed a well-organized medical department and had many
hospitals operational.
His surgeons shared the problems of their northern
colleagues: ignorance of the cause of infection, inadequate
training, and untrained hospital personnel to care for the
sick and wounded. What the South did not share with the North
was alack of resources which was intensified by a naval
blockade.
This narrative thesis uses records from three Richmond
hospitals of 1862-1865 to reveal the problems faced by all
hospital personnel, and to address the question of
responsibility for the high rates of hospital morbidity and
mortality which occurred. It is technically oriented to give
both physicians and laymen insight into the day to day
triumphs and tragedies of these men and women who worked under
nearly impossible conditions.
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