Grim look at Civil War surgery unearthed by new pit of limbs, bodies
arstechnica.com
arstechnica.com
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Child_soldiers_in_the_American...
For example, Roman life expectancy was only 21, but if you made it to age 5 it jumped to 42.
Even then the laws at the time was 18 to enlist -- so they already viewed child soilders the same way we do now. The big difference is age verification was a lot harder because there was little in the way of a paper trail.
It was a temporary field hospital for the Battle of Franklin in Tennessee. It doesn't talk about it in the wiki page but if you search for "Carnton house blood stains" or go on a tour yourself you can see how horrific it was. Quite literally you can see the blood stained floorboards today from the civil war. You can still walk on them.
There is a place on the second floor where one of the surgeons had a bucket on the floor to hold his tools and the entire floor around it is stained with blood except for a small ring from the bucket which is unstained.
Highly recommend a tour of the house, grounds, and small museum especially if you like history. Plus let me know if you are in town. ;)
My wife has ancestors that fought in the Battle of Franklin, and we’ve toured the house a couple of times. We’re planning on making it to the descendants gathering at some point.
The idea of my kids’ great-great-...-grandfather marching across that valley into the Union lines and near-certain defeat is haunting. They knew it was a lost cause, without question. We make it a point to play “The Bonnie Blue Flag” every time we drive through that area.
Interesting fact contrary to popular belief: the vast majority of civil war surgeries involved some form of anesthesia. The notion that doctors were going around lopping off limbs of wide awake soldiers is a myth.
> the vast majority of civil war surgeries involved some form of anesthesia
I can't find the article at the moment but I recall seeing somewhere that it was pretty common for incorrect amounts of anesthesia to be administered and many patients waking up (or worse, being aware of their surroundings and able to feel pain but being unable to move or scream; a personal nightmare of mine). Even if this was a small minority of cases it's still haunting enough to leave a legend that roughly corresponds to the myth you cite.
It is a thing, but not during the civil war. The horror story happens when using drugs meant to paralyze internal organs. Those drugs don't make you sleep, just paralyze you and your organs so your intestines aren't squirming around as the doc tries to fix something. So if they give you that, but not the actual anesthetic, things go bad. Modern hospitals have devices to pick up on this situation. (In the extreme situation of full consciousness, anyone monitoring heart rate will notice something is very wrong.)
In civil war days this didn't happen as they didn't have the artificial respiration necessary to support such drugs. You could easily have been given not enough, but the paralysis-but-awake thing (true "anesthesia awareness") wouldn't happen.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neuromuscular-blocking_drug
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anesthesia_awareness
Specifically, neuromuscular blockers is what you seem to be referring to. Those paralyze only muscle, not other organs, and therefore have little influence on intestines. They are of multiple uses to both the anesthesiologist (intubation) and surgeons (easier to reach places normally crammed up by active muscle). There are ways to reduce intestinal activity specifically, but those are not very efficient (glucagon).
As for awareness situations, you are right in that they are more likely with neuromuscular blockers on board. However, research shows that the surgical context is of great importance, and situations where:
- the patient is perceived as most fragile (cardiac surgery)
- or where things go too fast (emergency C-section)
Detection of true awareness is difficult, since many people will tell you they woke up during surgery while it was in fact the end of surgery (from personal experience). It is not known how frequent true awareness really is, but it is commonly accepted to be quite rare, and this goes along with my personal experience.
If you are reasonably healthy, the chance of true awareness during surgery is IMO vanishingly small.
Civil war soldiers did indeed not have neuromuscular blockers, but since efficient sleep medication did not exist, true awareness was far more frequent (probably the norm, in fact).