Medical Failures and Successes in Response to Epidemic Disease During the American Civil War

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This research project aimed to research the actions of the medical professionals on both sides of the American Civil War, specifically in their reaction and attempts to deal with an unprecedented (in America) onslaught of epidemic disease. The research methods were exclusively textual, with Virginia Tech’s Newman Library supplying the necessary books. Historical overviews, more localized overviews, and a personal diary account were utilized. The paper concludes that while many antebellum American physicians and their methods proved totally inadequate to deal with the conditions of armies of tens of thousands of men, their mistakes proved as instructionary as their successes, resulting in a net gain in medical expertise and knowledge. On a wider note, this paper hopes to better acquaint readers with the fact that most of the deaths in America’s bloodiest war were caused by disease, and to demonstrate the evolution of the American physician during the crucial phase of modern medical development, the nineteenth century.