At the beginning of the Civil War, the U.S. Army had a medical corps consisting of all of 98 surgeons and assistant surgeons. No one called physicians doctors in those days, they were all called surgeons. The Corps had about 20 clinical thermometers, and didn't have a "modern" microscope until 1863. No one in the U.S. really had any idea what a laryngoscope, stethoscope, or opthamalscope was. No surgeon used hypodermic syringes to administer medicine.
Instead, morphine, the leading pain-killing drug of the time, was rubbed or dusted into the wound. Sometimes it was also given in the form of opium pills. They had no idea what addiction was, and so many soldiers came home from the war addicted to opium. Fortunately for these poor soldiers, opium was available at every self-respecting local druggist.
And so was the sorry state of medicine at this time in American History. Conditions would improve by the end of the war, as outlined in my medical technology page.
