Did they have tranquillizer before the civil war?

Answer 1

It's not certain whether you are referring to a drug that induces tranquility in an individual or in the sense of anesthesia.

Tranquilizers of the first sort include anti-anxiety drugs, anti-psychotics, and mood stabilizers. All of these "tranquilizers" were not invented or synthesized until 1864 or later and were not used in connection with the Civil War.

When referring to "tranquilizer" in the sense of an anesthetic, there were several advances shortly before the start of the war. Many plant derived substances with anesthetic properties were known from antiquity for example: opium, mandrake, and henbane, Although most of these were effective to some degree as pain killers, they were not nearly as useful for tranquilizing or anesthetizing.

Nitrous Oxide (laughing gas) was suggested by Humphry Davy in 1799, but no one seems to have pursued it for a long time afterwards.

Dr. Crawford Long used ether as an anesthetic for an operation in 1842 in Georgia and published a report on it in 1849 - about 11 years before the start of the Civil War. About the same time (and independently), Dr. William Thomas Green Morton administered ether for anesthesia for another surgery in Massachusetts. Chloroform also started being used starting around 1847. Note that ether is highly flammable and chloroform was not as safe as ether - especially when administered by an untrained person. Chloroform came to be the preferred anesthetic for use by both Union and Confederate doctors because of its faster action, non flammability and smaller bulk. A major drawback of chloroform was its characteristic of being fatal if the patient was allowed to overdose. Because many soldiers were aware of chloroform's potential fatality, some soldiers would refuse anesthesia and be operated on while fully conscious.

Of course there is also the old standby - ethanol. It has some tranquilizing and anesthetic properties if the patient is sufficiently drunk. Alcolhol has been used this way pretty much since the beginning of medicine.

Coca was commonly used by natives of the Western Hemisphere and in1859 (1 year before the outbreak of the Civil war) cocaine (which comes from coca) was first isolated for use as a local anesthetic but it was not widely used in the battlefield hospitals.