Letterman and with the help of the Sanitary Commission, a hospital system was created that would ,in time, care for over one million soldiers and be considered one of the wonders of the medical world. With the reforms that occurred in the Medical Department, spearheaded by Surgeon General Dr. It was so bad that if a wounded soldier could find a bed in a "private" hospital he did so, hoping the bill would be paid by the government. Most of the so-called hospitals lacked essentials: beds, bedding, medicines and dressings. in those initial months, lack of organization was woefully prevalent. As with most endeavors of the Medical Dept. In Philadelphia: a coach factory, silk mill, and a railroad station were turned into hospitals. included jails, hotels, girl's schools and warehouses.
Thus, when the casualties from such battles as Bull Run were transported away from the battlefield they were held in improvised hospitals. In the following section we shall go into a general hospital for a day and see what the day held for the patients, the doctors, nurses, stewards, visitors and others associated with the hospital.We will look at some of the wounded Vermonters and their doctors in a bit more detail to get a sense of what they experienced.Īt the beginning of the war there were no large military hospitals. Others would never leave these hospitals. Some would recover and return home once more, to resume their civilian occupations - if possible.
Here they would be close to family and friends. For those wounded Vermonters who were fortunate enough to have survived all this, that meant the General Hospitals at Brattleboro, Burlington, and Montpelier. Others would eventually be transferred to their home states. Some would go to the great general hospitals - huge 1000 bed and more hospitals - located in Washington D.C. The wounded were taken off the ambulances and placed in the hospital awaiting a train or ship that would carry them further north. At last the ambulances pulled up to the evacuation hospital.
CIVIL WAR HOSPITAL SHIP J.K. BARNES UNION DRIVERS
Another agonizing ambulance ride over rough roads, with men crying out for the drivers to stop.anything was better than this constant agony as ends of bone grated against newly formed stumps and pain seemed to be unending. Wounded men kept coming.and those in the process of recovery had to be shipped out. "Would the journey never end?" " Would the pain never cease?" Eventually he would rest for a time at the field hospital, recovering somewhat from his surgery. An amputation perhaps - if the bone was shattered by the minie ball, as often occurred. On then, to the field hospital for needed surgery.
Still, the soldier had a very long journey ahead of him. Administering opium pills and drinks of whiskey to decrease pain and act as a "stimulant". The attendants tried to relieve some pain - splinting injured bones and stopping bleeding if they could.
More detailed care had to wait for hospitals further in the rear, and that required more moving and more agony. Men running here and there trying as best they could to care for the immediate needs of the injured soldiers. Once there he was taken off the ambulance and placed in an area awaiting the surgeons care. He might well be aware of the hurried actions to place him on a stretcher and of the bone jolting agony of the ambulance as it covered the rutted roads to the field hospital. The journey of the soldier from the battlefield to the field hospital and thus on to an evacuation area or hospital was often an arduous one. Somebody's darling so young and so brave, wearing still on his sweet yet pale face soon to be hid by the dust of the grave, the lingering light of his boyhood's grace. "Into the ward of the clean white-washed halls, where the dead slept and the dying lay wounded by bayonets, sabres and balls, somebody's darling was borne one day. In The Hospital: General Hospitals in Vermont and elsewhere
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