The Civil War: How It Impacted the Future of Medicine in America
Thursday, September 13, 2012 from 6:30 PM to 8:00 PM (EDT)Philadelphia, PA
The College of Physicians of Philadelphia
19 South 22nd Street Philadelphia, PA 19103
Speaker: Ira Rutkow, MD, General Surgeon and Medical Historian
During the Civil War, America’s physicians learned about diseases and their clinical manifestations on a scale never before possible. The war created surgeons from doctors who previously had minimal operating experience. Physicians who had minimal background in treating complex illnesses and communicable infections experienced a lifetime of practice in several years of camping, marching, and conflict. America’s healers acquired administrative skills not feasible in antebellum America. For the first time, the nation’s physicians organized ambulance corps, assembled hospital trains, served on draft boards, resolved questions of medical manpower, and designed, staffed, and managed vast general hospitals. Finally, the scale and urgency of the war imposed much needed comradeship and discipline. “The constant mingling of men of high medical culture with the less educated had value,” wrote S. Weir Mitchell, “and the general influence of the war on our art was, in this and other ways, of great service.” Physicans familiarized themselves with disease and injury on an individual plane while the profession unified on a national level.
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