As soldiers lay dying all around them and others awaited
attention – some screaming, some in shocked silence – the
surgeons in blood-splattered clothes went to work, sawing
through bone. Their task was to sever the pulverized limbs and
shattered bones of those who had been hit by deadly bullets shot
from the barrels of rifled muskets. Amputations conducted on
such a large scale had never been seen before. If the evidence
of apparently amputated bone stumps and saws made of stone are
anything to go by, amputations have been practiced since
Neolithic times. It is during periods of war, however, that the
greatest leaps in this surgical procedure have taken place –
simply because of the sheer numbers of amputations required in
wartime. During the American Civil War (1861–1865) – a conflict
in which over 70 percent of recorded wounds were to the
extremities – an astonishing 50,000 amputations were performed.
It was largely down to the use of a new bullet called the Minié
ball – a slug which tore through tissue lik