Walking through Downtown Frederick

The morning began early once again and with a last breakfast at the TownePlaza Hotel before checking out, and walking through downtown Frederick. The Visitor Center welcomed us with a short movie about Frederick, showing off all the different things you can do around the County. Then we walked further on to the National Museum of the Civil War Medicine, which (who could have guessed) explained all the medical happenings during the Civil War. It was actually very interesting to hear how many things were invented during that time. For example, they haven't had usable ambulances before that, that could bring wounded soldiers to the field hospitals to save more lives. Jonathan Letterman eventually created better, more stable ambulances that wouldn't hurt the wounded more than they'd help them, and trained the ambulance corps to do the job. In the Civil War, the Union fought against the Confederates. Both had only one hospital before the war. Afterwards they had over 200 hospitals each. But the hospitals they used to have, were bad. Every fifth person didn't survive the hospitalisation back then. They believed that people died from bad smells, because where did people get ill? In swamps and big cities, i.e. bad smelling places. So, Florence Nightingale created a new structure for hospitals. She invented small, airy buildings, that only held up to 60 people, having huge windows and lots of space between the patients. She made sure, that the patients and buildings were kept clean, which resulted in the death mortality decreasing to under 5%. They did it for the wrong reasons as they didn't know about germs and bacteria yet, however, it worked.
Did you know that the usual Hollywood movie scenes with wounded people getting amputations and no anesthesia whatsoever are totally dramatized? 90% of the amputations were done under patients given chloroform or ether. They would also get morphine and opium afterwards to ease the pain. That actually resulted in a lot of drug addictions later on. But they were aware of the mental difficulties the war could bring with it, so they tried to work against that. The funniest fact for me was that most men didn't die from the actual fighting, wounds, drugs or hygiene - they were starving to death. But not because they didn't have enough to eat... But because they didn't know how to cook it. Their wives always did that, the men never learned to cook, so they were basically lost. How ironic it is, that tough, strong guys who might have always looked down upon cooking and women's work, now needed that "unnecessary, unworthy" knowledge to survive. What's even worse: They didn't learn from it. I bet, if we'd be in a war nowadays, most men would still not know how to cook properly to get sufficient nutrients during the war.
They also died because they drank the water from the latrines from them and their horses... Not like directly from them, but from downstream. Speaking of horses: It was very difficult to not only feed all the men but also the horses and mules they had with them. Millions of horses and mules died during the war, that's the really sad part. They didn't have anything to do with it...
We learned quite a lot about the Civil War and the inventions during the time, the exhibitions were interesting and engaging, so it was a good time there. I would have loved learning more, however, time is always limited on FAMs, so we left the museum and went to the next stop which was a hotel still under construction. The Visitation Hotel Frederick, Marriott Tribute Collection was a girls school run by nuns once. It'll open at the end of the year and will be a tribute to the history of the nuns' lives.
Afterwards, we made our way to our lunch through the city once more and I gotta admit that Frederick is so damn pretty. It looks very European with its Historic District and all the little independent and locally owned shops. it's walkable, super clean and you just feel safe around there. I'd never expected that I'd like the city so much, but I did.Okumaya devam et