Amputations
What is an Amputation you say? It
means to cut off a limb or digit of the body while in surgery. It can be an
arm, leg, finger, toe, and even a breast. It was mostly used in the Civil War
to try and stop infections from spreading. If someone were to get hurt, whether
it was getting shot in the leg or a broken bone, they were prone to infection.
The only way at the time was to grab their amputation kit (picture shown above)
and start sawing.
This was a brutal and disgusting procedure that was not very sanitary. While there was a battle, a lot of soldiers were injured and sent to a medical tent for help. While there were people getting amputations, there was nobody cleaning the kits and tools. So say you are a soldier that got shot in the arm, the guy next to you just had an amputation and your next. There was no cleaning, just a rinse and they went and cut your arm off.
This procedure did more harm than good, most of the time. It still saved lives, it saved more lives than any other wartime medical procedure by instantly turning complex injuries into simple ones. Battlefield surgeons eventually took no more than six minutes to get each moaning man on the table. This procedure was ultimately the best way to stop infections.
This procedure is sometimes used in war times on the scene, but it is very rare to see a procedure done like they used too. They now have cleaner ways of doing amputations and they are more controlled. For one instance I know a guy that accidently shot his arm when he was ten and had to get his arm amputated cause there was too way to fix the arm. That is how amputations were used and how they are still used today.
This was a brutal and disgusting procedure that was not very sanitary. While there was a battle, a lot of soldiers were injured and sent to a medical tent for help. While there were people getting amputations, there was nobody cleaning the kits and tools. So say you are a soldier that got shot in the arm, the guy next to you just had an amputation and your next. There was no cleaning, just a rinse and they went and cut your arm off.
This procedure did more harm than good, most of the time. It still saved lives, it saved more lives than any other wartime medical procedure by instantly turning complex injuries into simple ones. Battlefield surgeons eventually took no more than six minutes to get each moaning man on the table. This procedure was ultimately the best way to stop infections.
This procedure is sometimes used in war times on the scene, but it is very rare to see a procedure done like they used too. They now have cleaner ways of doing amputations and they are more controlled. For one instance I know a guy that accidently shot his arm when he was ten and had to get his arm amputated cause there was too way to fix the arm. That is how amputations were used and how they are still used today.