One of good things Civil War provided
was knowledge, use of modern anesthesia

Although it was the bloodiest conflict in American history, there were some good things that resulted from the Civil War.

The development of the telegraph improved communications tremendously. It was found that railroads provided better transportation and that photography was a great way to record history. Where sustenance was concerned, it was learned that tin cans allowed food to be shipped longer distances without spoiling.

From a medical standpoint, ambulances and hospitals were developed, the importance of sanitation and hygiene began to be understood and the value of anesthesia in reducing the mortality rate was discovered the hard way. Patients who were anesthetized appeared to survive. Those who weren’t, often didn’t.

The use of the anesthetic agents ether and chloroform first was described in the 1840s by American physicians. But anesthesia was not commonly used by physicians in the United States prior to the outbreak of the Civil War in 1861.

Prior to the war, alcoholic drinks, physical restraints, opioid drugs and bite blocks were the most typically employed methods of keeping a patient under control during surgery. And, there was a perception it was unmanly for a male to undergo surgery with an anesthetic.

According to Dr. Maurice S. Albin, anesthesiology professor at the University of Alabama-Birmingham (UAB), the frenzy of war changed all that. Albin, in an article in the American Society of Anesthesiologists newsletter, notes that more than 120,000 uses of anesthetic agents were employed by both Union and Confederate surgeons during the war.

“Fortunately for both the Union and Confederate medical corps, many manuals by outstanding surgeons, both national and foreign, were available,” Albin wrote. “Some of these manuals contained descriptions on the use of these agents. Eminent Confederate surgeon John Julian Chisholm published a manual for battlefield surgery in 1861 that included a chapter on the use of chloroform, and famed surgeon Valentine Mott’s essay on the use of the same agent was available to Union surgeons.”

Chisholm stated he never had a single death from chloroform in more than 10,000 uses, while Confederate surgeon Hunter Holmes McGuire claimed to have used chloroform more than 28,000 times with no loss of lives attributed to the agent.

Some 15,000 physicians served in the two armies, according to Albin. “Firsthand exposure to anesthetic agents and techniques, as well as to their side effects and complications, gave these physicians an insight into the world of anesthesia that might never have been possible without this conflagration’s occurring,” he said. “After the termination of this horrendous conflict, these doctors would return to their practices, hospitals and medical schools, all the richer for being exposed to this unique American contribution to the life-easing quality of mercy – the discovery of anesthesia.” UAB created the world's first academic anesthesiology history unit in 2002 with the development of the David Hill Chestnut, M.D., Section on the History of Anesthesia.