The Marquess of Winchester's Regiment

English Civil War Re-eactors

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Doctor’s Rounds by "Surgeon" Pearson

First of all I should like to say thanks to all my customers for keeping me busy during the last season. The absence of cases of dysentery reflects well on the efforts of the caterers, but I couldn't help but worry at the number of soldiers coming in with musket wounds. Have the R.A. taken to using telescopic sights?

Funnily enough, I am writing this to try to reverse this situation. No, I'm not trying to persuade the kitchen staff to dump the odd dead rat in the stew but musket wounds are difficult to imitate in a living history context. They'd also be much less common than (for instance) stomach upsets. All right, I admit it, I read a book over the winter and now I want to tell you about it cause I'm proud of myself.

The book in question was called 'Going to the Wars' (Carlton). You may have heard of it or read it already. It's a mine of snippets of information about life during the civil wars. My interest is in the medical side of things, and this is the picture I got from this book:
It seems reasonable to suppose that at any given time a 1/3 of the troops in a static garrison were unwell. The main illnesses would be gastroenteritis and dysentery (from bad food and water), or more seriously bubonic plague (rats) and typhus (spreads easily in crowded conditions). Malaria was also endemic in parts of southern England until late in the century (notable victim O Cromwell Esq.). If the garrison was clever enough to get itself besieged then the number of sick could easily rise to 1/2 of the garrison and civilians as well. Even healthy soldiers would be left weak from malnutrition if the siege went on for very long.

If the troops ended up having to earn their pay and fight the foe then there was the risk of being wounded. I get the impression (from Carlton) that about 1/2 of wounded soldiers died instantly or later on. For officers only about 1/3 died as they were more likely to be helped off the field. The biggest factor in survival would be the delay between wounding and medical treatment. I shall try to describe the soldier's chances of surviving a wound below by weapon type.

The sword
The most common wound appears to have been the sword cut. These also tended to be the least serious particularly if they were kept clean and rapidly bandaged to stop soil organisms which cause gangrene from entering. A cut to the head however may well injure the brain which would invariably be fatal. The sword really came into its own when infantry broke and fled before cavalry - a sword blow delivered from a galloping horse would easily smash open the skull or crush vertebrae. The sword's edge in these circumstances was the second most common form of death after disease - cavalry sometimes pursued fleeing infantry until their swords had gone blunt from use.

Sometimes a sword blow would break a bone: Cleanly broken limbs usually healed if a splint was effectively applied. When bones were shattered or exposed the limb was usually amputated. The patient often survived! Stab wounds were also trivial as far as the limbs were concerned. However if the sword entered the intestines, peritonitis was inevitable. Punctures of the chest cavity normally resulted in the victim asphyxiating or drowning in his own blood. All too often a penetrating wound introduced foreign matter such as scraps of clothing which produced sepsis.

Polearms
Polearms do not seem to have caused as many wounds as swords. The pike could only deliver stab wounds with much the same effects as a sword. Halberds and partisans could also cut but are much clumsier than a sword and so less likely to hit. The halberd's greater weight and length made it much more likely to break bones than a sword was.

The Musket
Although musket wounds were less common than sword wounds they were much more likely to be fatal. When musket shot hit pike staffs it sent jagged wooden splinters flying deep into the nearby bodies. On entering the body musket balls also shattered bones turning the fragments into internal missiles. When travelling at full velocity heavy musket balls made an entry wound about half an inch wide. Musket balls were poorly cast and often tumbled through the air describing a spiral path. This spiral often continued in some poor unfortunate's body - a deep spiralling wound is almost impossible to clean. Bits of bone or teeth from those struck often wounded those next to them in the ranks. In addition musket wounds almost invariably turned gangrenous. There were two reasons for this -  firstly the ball often had bits of dirty cloth wadding adhering to it and in any case would take scraps of the victim's clothing deep into the wound. Secondly as well as puncturing flesh and smashing bone the musket ball also crushed the flesh around the entry wound bruising it. This had the effect of sealing blood vessels - musket wounds did not bleed very much - but the crushed flesh would die and rot unless cut away. Sometimes a whole limb would have to be cut away.

The high incidence of sepsis from musket wounds often led to suspicions that the enemy was using poisoned bullets - such suspicions sometimes led to massacres of prisoners.

That only leaves two other types of wound: cannon shot - if it hits a limb it will tear it off or smash it to pulp. If it hits anywhere else, goodbye. Even spent cannon shot rolling along the ground could smash a careless foot.

And gunpowder burns. Burns were usually sustained in magazine explosions or the like. Very close range musketry/pistols could also inflict nasty burns. If the victim didn't die of shock the burns usually turned septic.

In summary most soldiers died of disease especially in sieges (this remained true until the 1914 - 18 war). Most wounds were inflicted by swords. Musket wounds were the most dangerous and the musket was probably the infantry's most dangerous weapon. However more deaths in action were as a result of sword blows from cavalry when the infantry had broken.

So there you go. Please bear this in mind when you fancy a bit of a scream and a lie down at living histories if you turn up with something likely to be fatal you may end up stuck in bed until Reg Pett can smuggle you out of the public's gaze in one of his coffins! Play it safe - have you considered gippy tummy?

DOC
Aymez Loyaulte 1995',