Thousands of Wounded

After the fighting ended, medical officers from both armies faced caring for 16,420 wounded men. Army surgeons, assisted by civilian doctors and nurses and hundreds of soldiers, struggled to provide effective medical care with limited resources. As was typical at the time, armies transported wounded soldiers off battlefields to nearby towns for care. Most of the 8,408 Union wounded went by steamboat to nearby Savannah, Tennessee, or even farther away to northern cities. Most of the 8,012 Confederate wounded went first to Mississippi. From Corinth, many were transported by rail to communities throughout the western Confederacy. Limited transportation options forced Union medical officers to establish makeshift field hospitals on the Shiloh battlefield. On the high ground surrounding the Cantrell farmhouse, Dr. Bernard Irwin set up a 300-patient tent hospital. Using the four-room house as the surgery station, Irwin had tents, bedding, and supplies confiscated from Union camps to equip this hastily crafted battlefield medical facility. Brigadier General William Nelson praised the hospital arrangements adopted by Dr. Irwin during the battle as nearly perfect as the circumstances would allow. Irwin's tent hospital at Shiloh was a forerunner of modern mobile army surgical hospitals, and he learned from his experience there that triage on the field, rather than transporting the wounded, resulted in better patient response to treatment and more lives saved.

Tennessee · United States