Existing comment:
Field Hospitals:
Field hospitals were located in barns, houses or tents to the rear of the fighting. Injured soldiers often received some aid on the battlefield, usually having their wounds bandaged and receiving morphine for pain. They then were taken to the field hospitals, where the majority of the surgical operations took place. The men were triaged into three categories: mortally wounded, slightly wounded, and surgical cases. The surgical cases were attended to first, then the slightly wounded. Those who were considered mortally wounded were made as comfortable as possible, but little else was done for them until the others had been assisted.
After the Battle of Antietam, over one hundred sites were used as field hospitals, some only briefly but others for weeks or months. These two photographs are of the field hospital at the farm of Dr. Otho Smith, on the west bank of Antietam Creek two miles northeast of Sharpsburg and one mile west of Keedysville. Shown (right) are the Smith house and outbuildings, a thatch-roofed barn, and tents. The surgeon in the photograph (below) is Surgeon Anson Hurd of the 14th Indiana Infantry. This hospital treated both Union and Confederate wounded, up to 1,396 men at its peak.
"When circumstances would permit barns were to be designated as preferable in all cases to houses, as being in that season of the year well provided with straw, better ventilated, and enabling the medical officers with more facility to attend to a greater number of wounded." |