In the first part of the story, the main attention was paid to the organization of military medicine in the Russian army at the beginning of the 19th century. Now we will focus on the specifics of wounds, the provision of prompt medical care and the sanitary work of physicians.
Some of the most common wounds on the battlefield were bullet wounds. The lead bullets of the French flint muskets, like most ammunition of the time, left straight wound channels in the body. The round bullet did not fragment and did not rotate in the body, like modern bullets, leaving behind a real mince. Such a bullet, even at close range, was not capable of causing serious injury to the bones - most often the lead simply bounced off hard tissue. In the case of through penetration, the exit hole did not differ much in diameter from the entrance hole, which somewhat reduced the severity of the wound. However, contamination of the wound channel was an important aggravating factor of the gunshot wound. Earth, sand, scraps of clothing and other agents caused in most cases aerobic and anaerobic infections, or, as it was called in those days, "Antonov fire".
To understand more fully what awaits a person in the event of such a complication, it is worth turning to modern medical practice. Now, even with adequate treatment of wounds with antibiotics, anaerobic infections caused by various clostridia, during the transition to gas gangrene, cause death in 35-50% of cases. In this regard, medical documents provide an example of A. S. Pushkin, who died of a rapidly developing anaerobic infection in 1837 after being wounded by a bullet from a pistol. Prince Pyotr Ivanovich Bagration died from the "Antonov fire" caused by a shrapnel wound when he refused to amputate his leg. The era before the discovery of antibiotics was extremely harsh for both soldiers and generals.
The French were armed with individual small arms of several types. These were infantrymen's flint muskets, while the cavalrymen were armed with shortened classic musketons and oval-shaped trombones. There were also pistols in service, but they did not differ in accuracy or destructive power. The most dangerous were the muskets, with their long barrels, sending 25 gram lead bullets 300-400 meters. However, the War of 1812 was a typical military conflict with artillery dominance on the battlefields. The most effective, long-range and lethal means against enemy infantry were cast-iron artillery shells, reaching a mass of 6 kg, explosive and incendiary grenades or brandskugels. The danger of such ammunition was maximum during flanking attacks on the advancing infantry chain - one core could disable several fighters at once. More often than not, the cannonballs caused fatal injuries when hit. However, if a person survived in the first hours, then torn, contaminated with crushed bones associated wounds most often ended in severe infection and death in the infirmary. Brandskugeli introduced a new concept into medicine - combined trauma, combining burns and injuries. No less serious ammunition was buckshot, which was used against nearby infantry. The French stuffed the cannon not only with lead bullets and buckshot, but also dirty nails, stones, pieces of iron, and so on. This naturally caused severe infectious wound infections if the person survived at all.
The overwhelming majority of wounds (up to 93%) of Russian soldiers were caused by artillery and musket fire, and the remaining 7% were from edged weapons, including 1.5% bayonet wounds. The main problem of wounds from French broadswords, sabers, pikes and cleavers was profuse blood loss, from which soldiers often died on the battlefield. It should be remembered that historically the uniform was adapted to protect against cold weapons. A leather shako protected the head from wounds, a standing collar protected the neck, and dense cloth created a certain barrier to sabers and pikes.
Russian soldiers died on the battlefield mainly from blood loss, traumatic shock, brain contusions and wound pneumothorax, that is, the accumulation of air in the pleural cavity, leading to severe respiratory and cardiac disorders. The most severe losses were in the first period of the war, which included the Battle of Borodino - then they lost up to 27% of all soldiers and officers, a third of whom was killed. When the French were driven west, casualties more than halved to 12%, but the death toll rose to two-thirds.
Army diseases and French unsanitary conditions
The treatment of the wounded during the retreat of the Russian troops was complicated by the untimely evacuation from the abandoned battlefield. In addition to the fact that some of the soldiers remained at the mercy of the French, some managed to get medical assistance from the local population. There were no doctors, of course, in the territories occupied by the French (everyone was in the Russian army), but healers, paramedics and even priests could help to the best of their ability. As soon as after the battle of Maloyaroslavets the Russian army went on the offensive, it became easier and more difficult for the doctors at the same time. On the one hand, they managed to deliver the wounded to the hospitals on time, and on the other hand, communications began to stretch, it became necessary to constantly pull up the military-temporary hospitals behind the army. Also, the French left behind a depressing legacy in the form of "sticky diseases", that is, infectious. The French, as mentioned earlier, were negligent in the sanitary conditions in the ranks of their own army, and in the conditions of a feverish retreat, the situation worsened. I had to apply specific methods of treatment.
For example, "peppered fever" was treated with quinine or its substitutes, syphilis was traditionally killed with mercury, for infectious diseases of the eyes, pure "chemistry" was used - lapis (silver nitrate, "hell's stone"), zinc sulfate and calomel (mercury chloride). In areas of outbreaks of dangerous diseases, fumigation with chloride compounds was practiced - this was the prototype of modern disinfection. Infectious patients, especially plague patients, were regularly wiped off with the "vinegar of the four thieves," an extremely remarkable drug of the time. The name of this topical disinfectant liquid goes back to medieval plague outbreaks. In one of the French cities, presumably in Marseille, four robbers were sentenced to death and forced to remove the corpses of those who died from the plague. The idea was that the bandits would get rid of the stinking bodies, and they themselves would be infected with the plague. However, the four, in the course of the mournful case, found some kind of remedy that protected them from the plague vibrios. And they revealed this secret only in exchange for a pardon. According to another version, "the vinegar of the four robbers" was invented by them on their own and allowed them to loot with impunity in the homes of those who died from the epidemic. The main ingredient in the "potion" was wine or apple cider vinegar infused with garlic and various herbs - wormwood, rue, sage, and so on.
Despite all the tricks, the general trend of the wars of that time was the predominance of sanitary losses in the army over combat ones. And the Russian army, unfortunately, was no exception: of the total losses, about 60% belong to various diseases that have nothing to do with combat wounds. It is worth saying that the French opponents put the pig on the Russians in this case. Typhus, which was spread by lice, became a huge misfortune for the French army. In general, the French entered Russia already lousy enough, and in the future this situation only worsened. Napoleon himself miraculously did not contract typhus, but many of his military leaders were unlucky. Contemporaries from the Russian army wrote:
"Typhus, generated in our Patriotic War in 1812, by the vastness and heterogeneity of the armies and by the coincidence and high degree of all the calamities of the war, almost surpasses all the military typhus that have existed until now. It began in October: from Moscow to the very In Paris, typhus appeared along all the roads of the fled French, especially deadly in stages and hospitals, and from here it spread away from the roads between the townsfolk."
A large number of prisoners of war in the second phase of the war brought a typhus epidemic into the Russian army. French physician Heinrich Roos wrote:
“We, the prisoners, brought this disease, because I observed individual cases of the disease in Poland, and the development of this disease during the retreat from Moscow. death."
It was during this period that the Russian army lost at least 80 thousand people in a typhoid epidemic that spread from the French. And the invaders, by the way, lost 300 thousand soldiers and officers at once. With a certain degree of certainty, we can say that the body louse still worked for the Russian army. The French, retreating from Russia, spread typhus throughout Europe, causing a serious epidemic that claimed about 3 million lives.
The question of destroying the sources of infection - the corpses of people and animals - has become important for the medical service in the territory liberated from the French. One of the first to speak about this was the head of the Department of Physics of the St. Petersburg Imperial Medical-Surgical Academy (MHA), Professor Vasily Vladimirovich Petrov. Jacob Willie supported him. In the provinces, a mass burning of dead horses and corpses of the French was organized. In Moscow alone, 11,958 corpses of people and 12,576 dead horses were burned. In Mozhaisk district, 56,811 human corpses and 31,664 horses were destroyed. In the Minsk province, 48,903 human corpses and 3,062 - of horses were burned, in Smolensk - 71,735 and 50,430, respectively, in Vilenskaya - 72,203 and 9407, in Kaluga - 1027 and 4384. Clearing the territory of Russia from sources of infections was completed only by March 13 1813, when the army had already crossed the border of the Russian Empire and entered the land of Prussia and Poland. The measures taken have ensured a significant decrease in infectious diseases in the army and among the population. Already in January 1813, the Medical Council stated that
"The number of patients in many provinces has decreased significantly and that even the most diseases no longer have a more infectious character."
It is noteworthy that the Russian military leadership did not expect such an effective work of the army's medical service. So, Mikhail Bogdanovich Barclay de Tolly wrote in this regard:
"… the wounded and sick had the best charity and were used with all due diligence and skill, so that the shortcomings in the troops of people after the battles were replenished by a significant number of convalescents always before it could be expected."
