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Doctors in the 19th century didn’t quite have the medical training they do today. Most would graduate without having ever seen, let alone performed, a surgery.
Amputations used to have a high rate of mortality, even when they were performed under ideal conditions. A study shows that amputations carried out at a high-end London Hospital in the 1850s had a mortality rate of 46%. This number went up to 70% for patients submitted to lower limb amputations.
Soldiers not only were amputated due to trench foot, but many actually lost their lives because of it.
Prosthetic limbs were not as sophisticated as they are today. For years, amputees had to carry artificial limbs that resembled nothing like the real thing.
A common condition that often led to amputation during WWI was trench foot, which is essentially damage of tissues due to prolonged exposure to moisture.
A Civil War amputation kit would normally contain the following: a catheter, a bone saw, a tourniquet, dressing forceps, and amputation knives. Chloroform would be given as an anesthetic.
This led to a post-war opioid crisis, as many soldiers got addicted while being treated for injuries and pain relief following amputations. Veterans continued to inject morphine to feed their habit.
Infections following amputations were common, and many were deadly. Disinfecting surgical instruments, washing hands, and the use of antibiotics were not a thing back then, so the proliferation of germs was rampant and often deadly.
More sophisticated weapons meant there were even more injuries during World War I, many of them resulting in amputation. It is believed that around 41,000 British soldiers had limbs amputated during the war.
A 1918 report by former Civil War surgeon W.W. Keen offers some insight into how war hospitals worked in 1861: "We operated in old blood-stained and often pus-stained coats ... We used undisinfected instruments from undisinfected plush-lined cases, and still worse, used marine sponges which had been used in prior pus cases and had been only washed in tap water."
An estimated 60,000 amputations took place during the Civil War, so it begs the question: what happened to all the discarded limbs? Well, most would end up in mass graves, but there’s also the possibility that some would have also been burned.
Before the limbs were taken and buried though, piles of discarded limbs would be a common sight at camp hospitals. Poet Walt Whitman describes this in one of his books: "Outdoors, at the foot of a tree, within ten yards of the front of the house, I notice a heap of amputated feet, legs, arms, hands, etc.—about a load for a one-horse cart."
Opiates were often used to help relieve pain following amputations. Though unlike the modern versions we have today, doctors would use a form of laudanum (a tincture of opium and alcohol) and opium pills. Morphine injections were later added.
Punitive amputation died down in Europe during the Renaissance and the Enlightenment periods, but it was later reintroduced in the 1800s, mostly in African colonies.
Amputation was a “quick fix” for a wide variety of injuries, many of which would have been treated differently today. Still, 75% of surgeries ended up being amputations. This was an average of about 1,250 a month!
Three out of four surgeries performed on soldiers during the American Civil War were amputations.
Anesthesia became popular just as the Civil War began, allowing for amputations to be performed pain-free. Before anesthesia though, many methods were used. "Prior to the war, alcoholic drinks, physical restraints, opioid drugs and bite blocks were the most typically employed methods of keeping a patient under control during surgery," explains professor Maurice S. Albin.
Byzantine emperor Phocas not only used amputation as punishment, but also added torture and blindness into the mix.
Amputation as punishment is still a reality in many Arab and African countries.
Some of our ancestors have used amputation as punishment. This was indeed the case in Babylonian times, as well as in ancient Peru and during the Roman and Byzantine periods.
This was a groundbreaking discovery, as up until that point the oldest evidence of an amputation dated back to 7,000 ago in France. The amputated limb belonged to a Neolithic male.
The amputated bone remains of a leg belonged to a young adult aged around 19 or 20. It is estimated that the amputation took place during childhood, so the person did live with an amputated leg for at least six years.
In 2022, archaeological evidence of an amputation dating back to over 30,000 years ago was found in the Asian island of Borneo.
Prehistoric amputations may sound like the stuff of nightmares, but the truth is that our ancestors were performing these surgical procedures thousands of years ago.
In ancient Rome, punitive amputation was heavily used on slaves during the reign of Constantine the Great.
Amputations have been performed by many ancient cultures, including Peruvian civilizations, the Inuit people, and some African tribes.
It is estimated that over 75,000 British soldiers actually died from trench foot complications.
Infection and gangrene were usually the main culprits when it came to fatalities. By trial and error, doctors found that amputations performed soon after the injury had a higher success rate.
Amputation is nothing new. In fact, we have been removing limbs surgically for thousands of years. Of course, the techniques evolved, and so did the survival rate, but amputation was—and still is—a common medical practice. Yet it's also been anything but a saving grace.
From being performed as punishment to being used as a wartime quick fix, the history of amputation is actually quite brutal. In this gallery, we bring you some gruesome facts about the history of amputation. Click on to learn more.
The barbaric history of amputation
From punishment to wartime quick fix
LIFESTYLE Gruesome
Amputation is nothing new. In fact, we have been removing limbs surgically for thousands of years. Of course, the techniques evolved, and so did the survival rate, but amputation was—and still is—a common medical practice. Yet it's also been anything but a saving grace.
From being performed as punishment to being used as a wartime quick fix, the history of amputation is actually quite brutal. In this gallery, we bring you some gruesome facts about the history of amputation. Click on to learn more.