Soon after, fever set in, and the patient died. ![]() She described how after his ankle was set, the man was still in agonizing pain, and upon further investigation, Pember discovered that the patient’s bandaged leg was perfectly healthy and that the other leg was “swollen, inflamed and purple.” The surgeon was so intoxicated that he had set the wrong ankle. Phoebe Yates Pember, a Confederate hospital matron, once wrote of a patient who was brought in after his ankle had been crushed by a train. Some took the occasional nip to dull their fears, while others, including the surgeons who were operating, got flat out drunk. 10 Drunken SurgeonsĪlcohol was a vital commodity during the Civil War and was primarily used as an anesthetic during amputations. The following 10 cases describe the horrors as well as astonishing, lesser-known facts about what the men endured throughout their time in Hell. ![]() From the echoing screams of men undergoing amputations to the inexperienced doctors and lack of medical knowledge, many believed it was better to die on thefield than to face the surgeons, who were often considered to be butchers. ![]() Although the battlefields were covered with death, perhaps the most frightening places were the field hospitals. America’s bloodiest and most costly conflict, the US Civil War claimed the lives of 620,000 men (roughly 2 percent of the population) with over 800,000 wounded or missing.
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