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| Rough surgery in the field: Federal wounded on Marye's heights This is war. The man in the foreground will never use his right arm again. Never again will the man on the litter jump or run. It is sudden, the transition from marching bravely at morning on two sound legs, grasping your rifle in two sturdy arms, to lying at nightfall under a tree with a member forever gone. But it is war. The usual treatment of an ordinary wound during the Civil War consisted in shaving the part if necessary and washing it with warm water and a sponge. Asepsis was not yet understood. The sponge, used on any and all cases indiscriminately, soon became infected. Gross foreign bodies were removed and< |
