WI better surgical and hygeine standards during 19th century warfare?

As well known, Crimean and American Civil War surgery was horribly septic, with high mortality and casualty rates. WI the discoveries of Pasteur and Lister occured before the late 1860's? Would the fatality toll in either war decrease markedly with an understanding of germ pathology and disinfection with dilute carbolic acid?

A number of other variables play into this -- epidemiology was also in its infancy (Snow, for example), and this knowledge directly affects an understanding of how certain diseases spread and can be controlled. For example, the solution for cholera contamination can be as simple as boiling, but even these basic preventatives eluded doctors of the mid 19th century.

I suppose the bookend question to this WI is the influence that antiseptic surgery, germ theory, and disease treatment had on WWI warfare. Did the advances in surgery, epidemology, and treatment affect the relative mortality or casuality rates during this war?
 
Both those wars fell into the brief window of horrors when reliable anaesthesia made large-scale surgery possible, but antiseptic procedure was not understood. So in this instance, better procedures would make a huge difference.

You wouldn't even need germ theory. Have the Semmelweis procedures adopted more widely and mortality will drop significantly.
 
Both those wars fell into the brief window of horrors when reliable anaesthesia made large-scale surgery possible, but antiseptic procedure was not understood. So in this instance, better procedures would make a huge difference.

You wouldn't even need germ theory. Have the Semmelweis procedures adopted more widely and mortality will drop significantly.

Semmelweis was mocked for his insistence that soaking one's hands in antiseptic (lime chloride solution?) would significantly lower cases of post-labor infection and death. I doubt that this information would help the ACW at the latest. The rejection of Semmelweis's findings, combined with the probability that any advanced knowledge of antiseptics was likely contained in British or continental European journals well out of the reach of most American doctors, would likely have hampered any opportunity for antiseptic procedure to reach the Americas in time for war. I strongly doubt there would be any way to make ACW surgery safer given the lack of communication and information about medical discoveries.

Maybe it's a bit ASB but perhaps an American or British doctor in the 1830's or 1840's happened upon methods similar to Semmelweis or Lister. This doctor went to the Crimea (or trained someone else to practice in the Crimea). This physician "miraculously" cured wounds that would normally develop massive infection. Such information might also guide surgeons in the ACW given that some knowledge found its way back from Britain and/or circulated widely in America. Still, the ultimately haphazard nature of war would probably result in uneven application of these new techniques.
 
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Not only would there be fewer deaths from infection, but depending on how "advanced" any ATL proto-germ theory becomes you could prevent the overwhelming number of casualties caused by dysentary and other waterborne pathogens (the cause more than any other of death in the ACW).

Concievably you could eliminate many of the amputations as well.
 
Given that salt and distilled alcohol had been around for centuries, it is somewhat surprising that medical sanitation took so long. Add boiled water, simple aseptic chemicals and the existence of the microscope since the 17th century, clean medicine and disease control could have happened much sooner.

But then again, it was not until 1958 that mouth-to-mouth resuscitation was identified as superior to all others and CPR was not established until later. Given the lack of high tech in these first aid procedures, the late timing is quite surprising.
 
Well, it's all simple once somebody invents it.

Routinely boiling water and pasteurizing other potables would have saved many a casualty in campaigns since the dawn of history, for example, but they didn't do it.
 
Boiling water as a way to stop disease could have been identified in the middle ages. Monks drank beer a lot (low alcohol level, 1 or 2%) and got sick a lot less. Why? because to make beer you need to boil the water. Just have someone put 2 and 2 together. Still, medieval wartime logistics and leadership being what they were. Most armies are still going to loose more people to attrition then to actual fighting.
 
Boiling water as a way to stop disease could have been identified in the middle ages.

It was. It just didn't help because the information didn't spread and nobody could provide experimental data.

I doubt, though, that lack of communication was that big of a problem in the mid-19th century. Anaesthetics made it to Britain within a year or two and into military hospitals in time for the Crimean War. The problem was that Semmelweis' methods (and who knows how many others') were not recognised as effective. If the medical coimmunity had been willing to believe there was a way to stop septicaemia in 1850, it would surely have made it to the US by 1860, and a military medical corps' chain of command is an excellent device for spreading the word.
 
That sounds interesting. Cite? (Interested, not disbelieving.)

IIRC Ibn Botlan (I don't have it here AM) states that in order to reduce the dangerous cold nature of water, it can be boiled before drinking it. Since diarrhea would be considered a 'cold' disease, that sounds to me like an extrapolation from observation.

The only material I have on hand now is a late, much corrupted text version of the Al-Taqwim that states that spring and rain water are cold and wet in the fourth degree (Liege Tacuinum 73-4) while boiled water is cold and wet in the second (Vienna Tacuinum f 89 r), and that therefore boiled water was safe for those of a cold temperament while spring water was recommended only for those of 'a hot liver'.

St Hildegardis Bingensis recommends water over wine for quenching thirst (Physica CLXXXII), but also states that beer is safer to drink than water for those who suffer from cold diseases of the lungs "because it has been boiled" (Physica XIII, Throop translation).

I recall having seen similar references elsewhere, but sadly didn't pay too much attention at the time. It might have been Arnaldus de Villanova, in which case it should be easy to find. At any rate, the idea seems to have been around, but there was never any clear conception of the why and how. And since water in Northern Europe tended to be drunk only when you couldn't help it, it seems there was no sustained interest in the idea.
 
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