Battle Cry Of Freedom Analysis

I medicine had received a massive rebirth with creation of advanced diagnostic equipment, Lister’s Germ Theory, the typhoid vaccine, major advances in anesthesia, management of fluid balances, and aseptic surgical techniques. These techniques and advancements were unavailable to Civil War doctors. Another prominent medical historian, James McPherson, argues that Civil War doctors “knew of few ways except amputation to stop gangrene” in his book Battle Cry of Freedom: The Civil War Era. McPherson continues to derail Civil War doctors by dividing them into two separate groups: the radicals, who believed that amputation saved more lives than threatened them, and the conservatives, who tried to save the limb no matter the degree of the wound

or the infection. These gruesome narratives of Civil War doctors are vast in number and swiftly condemn them as an inept and careless group that is to blame for the war’s horrific level of casualties. Yet, these historians fail to accurately display the time of the Civil War. It was a time of war. Emotions and reasonable decision thinking skills run rampant as more and more wounded soldiers came pouring into field hospitals crying in agony. Beds fill up fast and the number of available doctors run low. Doctors, just like the soldiers on the battlefield, had to think and act fast. They had to decide what the best course of action to take in order to save their patients, even if that meant taking a leg or an arm. And by doing so they saved lives. Revisionist historians, like H.H. Cunningham, Estelle Brodman, Alfred Bollet, and Kathryn Meier, have slowly begun to move away from these horrific and terrifying narratives. Cunningham argues that scenes of butchery have been greatly exaggerated and even praises Confederate medical officers for overcoming supply deficiencies. Brodman praises the doctors for their “ingenuity, careful attention to detail, and humane interest in the wounded soldiers.” Bollet takes on the media’s portrayal of doctors by claiming that “competence” does not make headlines, while Meier takes a completely different perspective: a bottom-up perspective. She claims that Civil War doctors did not have complete authority over the wounded bodies they are cared for. In many cases, doctors did not perform surgery without the consent of the patient. These patients often waited for hours before a doctor could examine them. During this time they were forced to examine themselves with basic first aid knowledge and determine, in their opinion, the best course of action a doctor should take. Potential amputees often refused the blade and would resort to violence to prevent being knocked out by chloroform. Yet, these narratives are never shown to the public. It must be easier to blame the ill-experienced doctors for the thousands of deaths rather than the soldiers themselves.
Another common misconception about Civil War surgery surrounds the use of anesthetics.

Many historians, like James Robertson, claim that “Instances were many when the only ‘anesthesia’ used was a bullet or a piece of wood thrust between a soldier’s teeth to keep him from biting his tongue while the surgeon cut, sawed, and sutured.” These narratives base their arguments solely on diaries and letters from soldiers who witnessed patients being physically restrained for surgery by doctors and orderlies and assumed the patient did not have anesthetic or saw surgeons perform operations on howling and writhing men while assistants held them down. Today, medical historians have separated the truth from the myth. With the truth being that surgery under anesthesia began in 1846 and became a universal requirement during the Civil War. Doctors near the battlefield used chloroform, while hospitals primarily used ether for operations and painful wound treatments. Many of the passing soldiers saw the patient in the excitement stage of anesthesia where an anesthetized person moans, shouts, and writhes regardless if surgery is being performed or not, thus explaining why doctors needed assistants to hold patients down so they could work and perform operations successfully. Plus, doctors normally gave their patient just enough anesthetic to make the patient insensible to the pain. Numerous military historians argue along the same lines as Duffy and Bollet, but instead of focusing

strictly on medical practices they also examine the amount of medical supplies. These narratives show that almost all surgical operations used anesthesia; “the exceptions were almost entirely limited to instances when supplies had been exhausted.” In cases such as these, doctors performed the operation in an isolated areas away from the other wounded with speed and efficiency, and heavily induced the patient with alcohol in hopes of blocking out the pain. But, cases like these rarely occurred due to the influence of pharmacy.
Despite, the vast number of Civil War medical histories, there are very few that go into endless detail about the influence of pharmacy during the war.

Alfred Bollet devotes a somewhat negative chapter on the subject by arguing that most of the drugs used did more harm than good with the only valuable drugs being “anesthetics (ether and chloroform), opiates (particularly morphine), and quinine (for malaria).” George Worthington Adams and H.H. Cunningham lightly touch upon the subject in their books by addressing what ailments each drug cured and how much should be administered per patient. The narratives that do devote themselves entirely to the subject are small and distant in number. Laying the groundwork are Norman Franke’s dissertation and George Winston Smith book, Medicines for the Union Army: The United States Army Laboratories During the Civil War. Franke’s doctoral dissertation

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