History of Medical Injection Devices and Hypodermic Syringes

From: milestonescientic.com The hypodermic syringe gets its name from two words of Greek origin: œhypo which means "under", and derma, which means "skin". It is interesting to note that during the past 150 years, the basic design of the hypodermic syringe has not changed very much. The first hypodermic syringes consisted of a cylinder with a movable plunger inside. Notable improvements included the incorporation of a glass piston within the cylinder to prevent leaks and reduce the chance of infection. As plastics developed, they were incorporated into the design to reduce costs and improve safety. Nonetheless, throughout all these years,...

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The History of Injecting and the Development of the Syringe

From: exchangesupplies.org The origins of injecting probably lie in the weapons such as blowpipes and poison tipped darts that have been used for thousands of years to introduce substances into the body - albeit involuntarily for most of the recipients. At its most basic, a syringe is a type of simple pump and it is likely that syringe-type devices were produced by many people. The earliest and most common syringe type device was called a ‘clyster’ a device for giving enemas. It is impossible to be precise about when this developed, and when injecting as we know it began - the origins of the hypodermic syringe are clouded in uncertainty...

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Civil War Medicine

by Dr Julius Bonello, MD The Union generals stood silently and watched as the long line of wounded made their way back to Washington. Although the morning had started out as glorious for the United States, it had quickly turned into a military debacle. Almost 2,700 Union Soldiers had been killed or wounded in a battle fought near a meandering stream known as Bull Run. The generals now knew that this engagement would be a long and costly one. They had greatly underestimated the strength of their enemy. They also realized, at that moment, that there were woefully unprepared for what was to come. Medical supplies that had been sent to the battlefield...

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Mrs Elvira J. Stockwell Powers

From: findagrave.com Birth: Aug. 6, 1827 Auburn Worcester County Massachusetts, USA Death: Sep. 21, 1871 Worcester Worcester County Massachusetts, USA Daughter of James and Prudence Stockwell. In 1860, Elvira J. Powers, age 30, was a school teacher living in Roscoe, Winnebago county, Illinois. Army Nurse, and author of "Hospital Pencillings; being a Diary while in Jefferson General Hospital, Jeffersonville, Ind., and others at Nashville, Tennessee, as Matron and Visitor," by Elvira J. Powers, Boston, 1866, pp 211. (Available online at archive.org.) She died of consumption, age 42 according to her death certificate. Inscription: A devoted...

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Civil War Medicine: An Overview of Medicine

From: ehistory.osu.edu During the 1860s, doctors had yet to develop bacteriology and were generally ignorant of the causes of disease. Generally, Civil War doctors underwent two years of medical school, though some pursued more education. Medicine in the United States was woefully behind Europe. Harvard Medical School did not even own a single stethoscope or microscope until after the war. Most Civil War surgeons had never treated a gun shot wound and many had never performed surgery. Medical boards admitted many "quacks," with little to no qualification. Yet, for the most part, the Civil War doctor (as understaffed, underqualified, and under-supplied...

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Amputations in the Civil War

(Originally published as "When Johnny Couldn't Come Marching Home: Civil War Amputations") by Ansley Herring Wegner, Tar Heel Junior Historian Association, NC Museum of History, Fall 2008. Unidentified soldier with amputated arm in Union uniform in front of painted backdrop showing cannon and cannonballs[Unidentified soldier with amputated arm in Union uniform in front of painted backdrop showing cannon and cannonballs]Many wounded soldiers during the Civil War (1861–1865), including those from North Carolina, had an operation called an amputation. In an amputation, a person has an arm or leg (or sometimes just a hand or foot) removed from...

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Coffin Nails: The Tobacco Controversy in the 19th Century

From: tobacco.harpweek.com Although a few women shared the tobacco habit in nineteenth-century America, it was overwhelming a male endeavor.  The most popular ways for American men of the time to consume tobacco were pipes, cigars, and chewing tobacco.  Snuff had largely gone out of fashion by mid-century, except for occasional sniffs by high-society youth.  Pipes were a favorite of all social classes, and varied in style from expensive, elaborately carved wood or stone to simpler, moderately-priced versions to cheap ones made of clay or corncob.  Chewing tobacco was common throughout the century in rural and urban areas...

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Civil War Battlefield Surgery

From: ehistory.osu.edu A Description of Civil War Field Surgery The most common Civil War surgery was the amputation. A few words about why there were so many amputations may be appropriate here. Many people have construed the Civil War surgeon to be a heartless individual or someone who was somehow incompetent and that was the reason for the great number of amputations performed. This is false. The medical director of the Army of the Potomac, Dr. Jonathan Letterman, wrote in his report after the battle of Antietam: The surgery of these battle-fields has been pronounced butchery. Gross misrepresentations of the conduct of medical officers...

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The Imponderable ‘What-Ifs’: Did the Medical Issues of Three Confederate Generals Cause the South to Lose the War?

By Kevin R. Loughlin, MD, MBA During the darkest days of World War II, Winston Churchill was credited as saying, “The imponderable ‘what- ifs’ accumulate”. Throughout history, imponderable what ifs have provoked the observer to consider how historical outcomes may have turned out differently. Such it is with the Civil War. It can be reasonably argued that the deaths of Albert Sidney Johnston and Stonewall Jackson and the illness of Robert E. Lee at Gettysburg irrevocably altered the course of the conflict and significantly contributed to the ultimate outcome. At the outset of the Civil War both the North and South had strategic plans. The...

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