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Civil
War Medicine
Maggots
and Rats: Nature's Surgeons During the Civil War
By
Alfred Jay Bollet, M.D.
From: Civil War Medicine: Challenges and Triumphs
©Galen Press, Ltd., Tucson, AZ, 2002
According
to soldiers' letters, swarms of flies harassed them in every encampment
and hospital. Because flies deposited their eggs in any open wound
or in wounds covered with the standard moist dressings (apparently,
the eggs could penetrate through several layers of moist muslin),
maggots rapidly appeared in wounds. Although the maggots caused
no pain, they disgusted the volunteer female nurses and their wiggling
bothered the wounded men. Clinicians, therefore, used oil of turpentine,
petroleum, kerosene, tobacco, chloroform, and antiseptics to kill
the maggots when flies were present. In well-run hospitals, strict
cleanliness usually prevented their appearance.
Yet, some Civil War surgeons
ultimately realized that maggots could have beneficial effects:
they painlessly cleansed wounds by digesting and removing dead tissue
without injuring healthy tissue. Confederate Surgeon Joseph Jones,
for example, reported that "a gangrenous wound which had been
thoroughly cleansed by maggots healed more rapidly than if it had
been left by itself." In recent times, physicians have rediscovered
the ability of maggots to debride wounds, often more carefully than
the best surgeon.
In
her memoirs, Phoebe Pember noted the skill of rats in removing dead
tissues in a wound without damaging healthy tissue or hurting the
soldier. "The rat surgeons," she noted, "could have
passed the [medical examining] board." A Virginian named Patterson
was wounded in the center of the instep of a foot; the wound sloughed,
and a large mass of "proud flesh" (newly formed growing
tissue, now called "granulation") formed an island in
its center. According to Pember,
"The
surgeons feared to remove the mass, thinking it was connected
to the nerves of the foot and lockjaw might ensue. Patterson was
very glum, but [after the rats got to his wound, he] brightened
one morning, and he exhibited the foot with great glee, the little
island gone, and a deep hollow left, but the wound was washed
clean and looking healthy."
©Galen
Press, Ltd., Tucson, AZ, 2002
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