USCivilWar.Net wants to thank Jenny Goellnitz for compiling this information.
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 indivdual 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 have been made and scattered broadcast over the country, causing deep and heart-rending anxiety to those who had friends or relatives in the army, who might at any moment require the services of a surgeon. It is not to be supposed that there were no incompetent surgeons in the army. It is certainly true that there were; but these sweeping denunciations against a class of men who will favorably compare with the military surgeons of any country, because of the incompetency and short-comings of a few, are wrong, and do injustice to a body of men who have labored faithfully and well. It is easy to magnify an existing evil until it is beyond the bounds of truth. It is equally easy to pass by the good that has been done on the other side. Some medical officers lost their lives in their devotion to duty in the battle of Antietam, and others sickened from excessive labor which they conscientiously and skillfully performed. If any objection could be urged against the surgery of those fields, it would be the efforts on the part of surgeons to practice 'conservative surgery' to too great an extent."
Still the Civil War surgeon suffers from being called a butcher or some other derisive term.
The slow-moving Minie bullet used during the American Civil War caused catastophic injuries. The two minie bullets, for example, that struck John Bell Hood's leg at Chickamauga destroyed 5 inches of his upper thigh bone. This left surgeons no choice but to amputate shattered limbs. Hood's leg was removed only 4 and 1/2 inches away from his body. Hip amputations, like Hood's, had mortality rates of around 83%. The closer to the body the amputation was done, the more the increase in the wound being mortal. An upper arm amputation, as was done on Stonewall Jackson or General Oliver O. Howard (who lost his arm at Fair Oaks in 1862) had a mortality rate of about 24%.
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