WARNING: I DO NOT WANT TO HEAR ANYTHING ABOUT DIFFERENT MILITARY ANYTHING, PLEASE BUTTERFLY NET THE MILITARY STUFF AND ASSUME THAT THE ACW IN THIS SCENARIO IS VERY ROUGHLY SIMILAR AS A MULTIYEAR CONFLICT ENDING IN NORTHERN VICTORY AND EMANCIPATION
Ok onto the meat of the question: The ACW came at kind of a weird time for medicine and norms of war, shortly before the formation of the Red Cross and the first Geneva Conventions and just on the (relative) brink of germ theory and asepsis. It also came right before the demise of muzzleloaders and with them the Minie ball. So the question to pose is: Suppose the Civil War happens somewhat later without major ramifications for other conflicts and this delay combines with maybe slightly more interest in the US in innovations in European medicine/sanitary practice and phaseout of the Minie ball. How does that affect soldier's health on campaign and combat injuries? Does an *ACW where there are much lower rates of camp diseases and epidemics and possibly somewhat fewer especially bad traumatic injuries, but without the kind of mass devastation of true WWI era industrial warfare,** have a substantially different cultural and socioeconomic impact?
*I am operating under the assumption that whatever replaces the Minie ball is going to be less prone to roll through the body and deform/fragment in ways that are especially uh...nasty.
**Yes I know people cite Petersburg as comparable to trench warfare, but it's not exactly like they had Maxim guns, breechloading artillery shells, or barbed wire there.
Ok onto the meat of the question: The ACW came at kind of a weird time for medicine and norms of war, shortly before the formation of the Red Cross and the first Geneva Conventions and just on the (relative) brink of germ theory and asepsis. It also came right before the demise of muzzleloaders and with them the Minie ball. So the question to pose is: Suppose the Civil War happens somewhat later without major ramifications for other conflicts and this delay combines with maybe slightly more interest in the US in innovations in European medicine/sanitary practice and phaseout of the Minie ball. How does that affect soldier's health on campaign and combat injuries? Does an *ACW where there are much lower rates of camp diseases and epidemics and possibly somewhat fewer especially bad traumatic injuries, but without the kind of mass devastation of true WWI era industrial warfare,** have a substantially different cultural and socioeconomic impact?
*I am operating under the assumption that whatever replaces the Minie ball is going to be less prone to roll through the body and deform/fragment in ways that are especially uh...nasty.
**Yes I know people cite Petersburg as comparable to trench warfare, but it's not exactly like they had Maxim guns, breechloading artillery shells, or barbed wire there.