What medicine did they use during the Civil War?

Laudanum was a very popular medicine based on opium to kill pain.

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Just beyond the range of musket fire from the battle, the assistant surgeon and one or more detailed men would establish an "advance" or dressing station, stocked with lint, bandages, opium pills and morphine, whiskey and brandy. Stretcher-bearers went forward to find the wounded and, if the latter could not walk, to carry them to the dressing station. The assistant surgeon gave the wounded man a stout drink of liquor, expecting it to counteract shock, and then perhaps gave him an opium pill or dust or rubbed morphine into the wound. Later in the war the advantages of a syringe to inject morphine became apparent.

In addition to opium pills, morphine and alcohol, Civil War surgeons had iodine and carbolic acid, and a long list of "disinfectants" such as bichloride of mercury, sodium hypochlorite, and other agents. Unfortunately, wounds were allowed to become raging infernos before disinfectants were tried. However, one of the good features of Civil War surgery was that anesthetics were almost always used in operations or the dressing of painful wounds. It was practically universal in the Union, and despite mythology, anesthetics were very seldom unavailable in the Confederacy. The almost universal favorite was chloroform, probably because ether's explosive quality made it dangerous at a field hospital operating table, where there was always the possibility of enemy gunfire.

- Civil War Home - Caring For The Men

http://www.civilwarhome.com/medicinehistory.htm

First answer by ID409092030. Last edit by Ladyblue1230. Contributor trust: 2 [recommend contributor]. Question popularity: 2 [recommend question]