During the Battle of Shiloh in April 1862, Union surgeon Bernard J.D. Irwin faced a dilemma: not enough places for treating the thousands of soldiers wounded in the two-day fight. A deserted farmhouse converted into a hospital was quickly overwhelmed. Tents—“pitched in regular order on the level ground on which the house was surrounded”—soon went up to receive the wounded. Within days, enough tents were erected to accommodate 300 patients. “Thus was established the first tent field hospital of any magnitude for the reception and treatment of the wounded on the field of battle,” Irwin later wrote. It would be the first of many field hospitals organized during the Civil War. Hospital tents, which were outfitted with sturdy cots and could be heated by stoves, were not only easily transported but also offered better air circulation than a permanent hospital or a building converted to be one. And the tents were expandable, constructed (per army regulations in 1861) with a lapel on one end “so as to admit of two or more tents being joined and thrown into one with a continuous covering or roof.” “[T]he wounded who were treated under canvas did better in every way, and recovered sooner than those treated in the large permanent hospitals,” Irwin concluded from experience. Shown here are statistics relating to the hospital tents used by the Union army during the conflict.
Sources
B.J.D. Irwin, M.D., Notes on the Introduction of Tent Field Hospitals in War (1894); Revised Regulations for the Army of the United States, 1861 (1861); United States War Department, The War of the Rebellion: A Compilation of the Official Records 129 vols. (1880–1901), Series III, Vol. 5.
Related topics: medical care
