Surgeon

Surgeon Imagine a modern day surgeon walking into an operation room or worse, tent, in the early 1860’s, during the Civil War. This time was considered to be the middle ages of medicine. A Civil War general graphically depicted the typical surgery routine like this; “There stood the surgeons, their sleeves rolled up to their elbows, their bare arms as well as their linen aprons smeared with blood, their knives not seldom held between their teeth, while they were helping a patient on or off the table...The surgeon snatched his knife from between his teeth.... wiped it rapidly once or twice across his bloodstained apron, and the cutting began.”# Picture that in your mind and now wonder why 60% of the 620,000 people who died during that four-year war died from disease after visiting the so-called hospital. In this time period before Louis Pasteur and his discovery and work with bacteria and viruses. Doctors during this time had inaccurate views about the causes of disease and infection; most blamed toxic “miasma” or “efflura” from wet swamplands or tents with poor ventilation. Some also thought that the ingestion of too much or too little salted meat, heat alternating with cold, battle stress or should, surgeons, worn, time, war, surgical, room, instruments, infection, during, after, years, shield, procedures, patient, operating, one, now, must, hands, fluid, civil, blood, between, before, been, about, while, wear, way, water, ventilation, two, tray, toxic, teeth