A hundred and fifty years ago, Americans realized with awe that the Civil War might be nearing its end. The death toll pushed three-quarters of a million, in a country of 28 million.
Most of those deaths were from disease. No one had any clue as yet about the germ theory. Vaccinations were limited. And American soldiers just could not get it through their heads that they should dig the latrine well AWAY from the sleeping and cooking areas – and DOWNHILL from the water supply!
But multitudinous deaths also came from battle causes. With trenches, explosive shells, gigantic armies, steam-powered transport, and long-range rapid-fire weapons, the Civil War was much like the wars of the 20th century. Much of medical care, however, was not too different from that of the Middle Ages. The killing technology had gotten way ahead of the saving and healing technology.
Dr. Marcus T. Babcock, who practiced in the Prattsburgh-Branchport-Hammondsport area, was part of the new wave of American physicians, who actually had formal college-level training as medical doctors. He joined up as assistant surgeon with the 141st New York Regiment.
If you got wounded, and were carried to Dr. Babcock, very likely you were suffering major damage. The standard “ball” for musket or rifle was 70-calibre, so it blasted and shattered its way through flesh and bone. Assuming you got hit in a limb, chances were very good that it was beyond repair. A standard sickening memory of the war was mountains of arms and legs outside the field hospitals.
The Doctors Babcock (two brothers and their nephew) would buy an x-ray machine in 1901, three years after Becquerel discovered the rays. But 40 years earlier Assistant Surgeon Babcock had no such luxury. After a quick survey by eye and by touch, he would take a saw to the limb, well above the damage, and amputate without anesthetic. (Doctors KNEW about anesthesia, but didn’t have enough to handle whole armies.)
Assuming you survived the wound and the surgery, Dr. Babcock then kept a sharp eye (and a keen nose) for signs of infection or gangrene. Antibiotics and even antiseptics still lay in the future, and even then many American doctors were too smart to fall for European foolishness about tiny invisible things that made you sick. But the well-educated Dr. Babcock was repeatedly commended for maintaining a clean, well-ordered hospital, so that had to have helped.
If gangrene did set in he had to amputate again, this time farther up the limb, and hope that things would go better the second time around. If you developed gangrene on the trunk, neck, or head… your life was at its end.
Henry C. Lyon of Pulteney (34th New York) was wounded at Antietam, sent home, and died along the way.
Monroe Brundage of Bath and Hammondsport stayed on the field commanding his company after being wounded at Antietam, then had his arm removed the following day. He left the service a few months afterward and had a successful civilian career, but died 12 years later at the age of 39. It’s hard to believe that his grievous wound did not contribute to his early death.
Richard Covell Phillips of Prattsburgh (44th New York) fought on after being wounded on the second day at Gettysburg, then made his way to a field hospital. There a doctor saved his arm, but he lost the USE of that arm. Later he and other walking wounded were ordered to make their own way on foot several miles down to town, picking their way through the decaying corpses of thousands of men, mules, and horses. After a night on the floor of a church the wounded went by train to Baltimore, where the hospitals were full. Diverted to Philadelphia he finally had his blood-soaked uniform cut away, a week or so after being wounded.
Philips stayed in the army, even serving a year or so postwar. But his wound exacted a toll from his family for decades. His oldest son wanted badly to get an extensive education, but the father insisted that he leave school as a teenager and work on the farm, doing the jobs his father couldn’t… an insistence that engendered deep bitterness.
Stephen P. Chase of Addison (86th New York) kept a diary in which he wrote laconically of being wounded in a charge. The next day he shockingly writes of going to the hospital to have the ball (or bullet) taken out of his head.
Chase came safe home, but his diary reveals issues of depression and Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder – both grasped only dimly, if at all, at the time. He was glad to be home and delighted to see his family, but devastated at all the empty spaces left by so many friends buried so far away. Going to church helped, and so did working in the field. But again and again he writes, “I am not enjoying my mind.” He finally concludes his diary perceptively (if perhaps a little optimistically), “I thank God I have the right use of my reason after 4 years of terrible war.”
Nowadays we recognize that such suffering was likely for the combat soldier of the Civil War. But it must have been just the same for the Civil War army surgeon, operating on screaming men, building up mounds of severed limbs, and working among row after row of soldiers he tried, and failed, to save.
Dr. Spencer Annabel, practicing physician and practiced re-enactor, will tell us about Civil War medicine at 4 PM Friday, Jan. 2 in Bath Fire Hall. This free event is the opening of Steuben County Historical Society’s 2015 Winter Lecture Series. Dr. Annabel is pictured “in the field.”