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Hi, I'm Jesse Alexander and thank you for supporting

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this companion episode of Glory and Defeat.

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In this week's regular episode,

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we talked about the weaponry of the Franco-Prussian War.

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Now let's talk about the medical services.

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Industrially produced weapons and mass armies meant that

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mid-19th century battlefield casualties exceeded the capacity to treat them.

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Both armies assigned doctors, stretcher-bearers,

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and ambulances to each unit and even as the battles raged,

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they gave emergency care in improvised field hospitals.

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On the battlefield, wounded men were triaged,

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the hopeless cases were left to die, and the others,

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whether friend or foe,

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were put on ambulance trains bound for hospitals in France and the German lands.

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These hospitals were sometimes run by the military and sometimes by

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private organizations like these Annie Tates Farina in the German states.

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British and American volunteers also ran treatment centers for both sides in the war,

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as did the recently founded Red Cross.

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Private donations of money and supplies also helped to make up

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for some of the deficiencies in medical care in the Franco-Prussian War.

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Thanks again for supporting Gloria and defeat and I'll see you next week.
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A French Chassepot bullet cast from soft lead, for example,

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caused an exit wound 13 times larger than the entry wound.

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The increasing number of severed limbs also overwhelmed

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military doctors who usually amputated using bone saws and without anesthesia.

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If a gunshot wound broke a bone,

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the survival rate was just 20%.

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Those who did survive their wounds were often left as

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invalids and despite the famous Hotel de Ville in Paris,

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government support was minimal.

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Diseases like typhus, cholera,

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and smallpox spread quickly amongst the men

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and contaminated water lead to diarrhea and dysentery.

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In the Franco-Prussian War,

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more men died of disease and inadequate medical care than directly in battle,

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one problem, was that doctors didn't know wounds ought to be kept sterile.

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This meant that many men died of blood poisoning,

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sometimes caused by doctors poking their unwashed fingers into open wounds.

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Just a few years after 1870,

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breakthroughs in bacteriology and wound treatment dramatically improved survival rates.