RT Journal
A1 Rutkow IM
T1 AMputation vs nonamputation
JF Archives of Surgery
JO Archives of Surgery
YR 1999
FD November 1
VO 134
IS 11
SP 1284
OP 1284
DO 10.1001/archsurg.134.11.1284
UL http://dx.doi.org/10.1001/archsurg.134.11.1284
AB 
DESPITE THE FACT that approximately 60,000 amputations were performed, the great surgical controversy of the Civil War concerned amputation vs nonamputation. Conservative surgeons and their overtly concerned civilian supporters wished to save a wounded extremity at any price. The radical "cutters" believed only in prompt amputation. At the start of the hostilities, conservatism seemed to hold sway. As early as June 1861, the US Sanitary Commission, a civilian-organized soldiers' relief society, authorized the printing of an American edition of the British Surgeon-General George Guthrie's (1785-1856) Directions to Army Surgeons on the Field of Battle. From his experiences at the Crimean front, Guthrie expounded the conservative viewpoint that a "leg should be seldom amputated for a fracture from a musket ball."