A manual of military surgery : for the use of surgeons in the Confederate States Army; with explanatory plates of all useful operations / By J. Julian Chisolm.

  • Chisolm, Julian John, 1830-1903.
Date:
1864
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: A manual of military surgery : for the use of surgeons in the Confederate States Army; with explanatory plates of all useful operations / By J. Julian Chisolm. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by the Harvey Cushing/John Hay Whitney Medical Library at Yale University, through the Medical Heritage Library. The original may be consulted at the Harvey Cushing/John Hay Whitney Medical Library at Yale University.

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    regular forms which are obseiwed in the routine of civil practice. The diseases of camps are few, and exhibit a strik- ing uniformity of character, dependent upon numer- ous depressing causes, to which all soldiers are equally liable, and which belong in common to every army, irrespective of nationality and climate. Con- tinued exposure and fatigue, bad and insufficient food, salt meat, indifferent clothing, want of cleanliness, poor shelter, exposure at night to sudden changes of temperature, infected tents and camps, form a com- bination of causes which explains the fatality of an army in the field. Troops are usually drawn from the rural districts, where they have never been exposed to those mor- bific causes which are incidental to the atmosphere of cities, and which entail a series of infantile diseases upon the growing generation. The unavoidable ex- posure, and the general liability to these causes while in transit, to which city troops are exempt, make such diseases a fearful scourge in armies. The measles, a mild disease, which excites no alarm under ordinary conditions of protection from the weather, strikes terror in a camp, where its sequelae, of pneu- monia and phthisis, are truly fearful. This disease alone has laid a heavy percentage upon the effective strength of our army. Add to this, and kindred eruptive diseases, glandular affections, tuberculosis, capillary bronchitis, typhoid and malarial fevers, with diarrhoea and dysentery, and we have already summed up the chief causes of army mortality and deterio- ration of strength. All of these diseases can, to a certain extent, be avoided by recourse to a proper lrygiene, which has not been valued by commanding officers, and in many instances has neither been