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Because of various new weapons, Americans were forced to make medical strides throughout the duration of the American Civil War.

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Clara Barton risked her life daily to bring supplies into the field during the Civil War. She founded the Red Cross in 1881 when she was 60 years old and ran it for the next 23 years.

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- The importance of sanitation became understood and widely used.
- Female nurses were introduced along with the help of the Catholic orders.
- Many doctors began to be trained to do many different things rather than a specific area.
- The sanitary commission was formed.

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Jonathan Letterman made a caravan of 50 ambulances that would go into the battle fiend and pick up wounded soldiers to bring straight to a field hospital. Each ambulance was equipped with a driver and two stretchers. There was also a lockbox under each driver's seat to ensure the soldiers would not steal essential proteins or morphine needed for the wounded.

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Killed: 620,000
Wounded: 476,000
Missing: 400,000

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Until the Civil War, a chest wound was virtually untreatable and not worth the time because the patient would most likely die- even if the procedure was successful. Benjamin Howard, a surgeon assistant, found out the problem was not the wound but the sucking from the thoracic cavity. To fix this, he closed the wound with metal sutures, alternating layers of lint or linen bandages, and added drops of collodion. The survival rates went up 4 times and this became standard procedure.

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The intense mercury pills different people had to take to stay alive caused genetic deformities. Carleton Burgan contracted gangrene which moved from his mouth to his eye and led to him needing his whole right cheekbone taken out. Dr. Gordon Buck used different dental fixtures to fill in the missing pieces of Burgan's face. He is now known as the father of modern plastic surgery as he pioneered the use of small sutures to minimize scarring. He was also the first doctor to take pictures of the reconstruction and effectively made gradual changes through many surgeries

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After some practice, surgeons only took 6 minutes to get an injured soldier from the battlefield to the amputation table. They would apply a chloroform soaked handkerchief and make a deep cut. Union soldiers were the most skilled amputators of the war. Even in the best conditions, about 25% of soldiers still lost their lives during amputation.

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The number of injured soldiers was too high to be able to perform surgery to fix the broken limbs, which forced medical professionals everywhere to find a faster way to save lives. Doctors had to work quickly to amputate the infected area because the lead would seep into the bloodstream and further infect the soldier. Amputation saved more lives than any other treatment in the Civil War.

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Daniel was the commander of the 3rd army corps. At the Battle of Gettysburg in 1863, the major's leg was shot and shattered by a confederate bullet. Within an hour of the gun wound, his leg was amputated. This was publicized and paved the way for countless more amputations. Sickles sent his leg to the Army Medical Museum in Washington D.C. Each year following his amputation, Daniel visited his leg on the anniversary.

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Because how painful amputation is, the patient would move around so much that the surgeon may make a mistake while taking the limb. The doctor would place a chloroform soaked cloth over the nose of the patient which would put them to sleep. Unfortunately, the liquid was wasted as it evaporated and slowly wore off. Dr. Chisolm invented a 2.5 inch inhaler where chloroform was dripped into a perforated tube allowing the vapor to mix with air. This would knock the patient out long enough to operate.

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http://mentalfloss.com/article/31326/5-medical-innovations-civil-war
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/3046560
http://www.redcross.org/about-us/who-we-are/history/clara-barton