Civil War Iodine

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902 - Civil War Iodine

Welcome to Medical Discovery News.  I’m Dr Norbert Herzog. 

 And I’m Dr. David Niesel 

The single bloodiest day in US history may have happened on the Antietam National Battlefield in Maryland.  

 On September seventeenth, eighteen-sixty-two, there were twenty-three-thousand casualties in just twelve hours to stop the Confederate Army of Northern Virginia's first invasion of the North. 

 On that day Confederate General John B. Gordon defied the odds of surviving five bullet wounds thanks to iodine which doctors didn’t know at the time was an antiseptic.  

 The first bullet from the Union Army hit Gordon in his right calf, another higher up the leg, and then one to the left arm and one to his shoulder.  

 He fought on until a fifth bullet hit his left cheek, barely missing his jugular vein, and he passed out..   But it was the iodine that his wife applied what seemed to him“ three to four hundred times a day” to his infected arm that saved him. 

 Not only did doctors not know about iodine’s germ-killing abilities, germ theory hadn’t been discovered yet. So, what are the origins of iodine? 

 To develop saltpeter, an ingredient needed for gunpowder during Napoleon’s wars, a French chemist was burning seaweed when he accidentally added too much acid to the ash. It released a violet-colored vapor which he let condense. 

 That turned out to be iodine which they named as a new element. By the Civil War, iodine was standard treatment for wounds, and today, it’s still used to prevent goiters and other thyroid conditions as well as a potent antiseptic!     

 We are Drs. David Niesel and Norbert Herzog, at UTMB and Quinnipiac University, where biomedical discoveries shape the future of medicine.   For much more and our disclaimer go to medicaldiscoverynews.com or subscribe to our podcast. Sign up for expanded print episodes at www.illuminascicom.com