Apropos nothing, it is interesting from a general historical standpoint to look at the consequences of "regime change" to the success of any nation's prosecution of a war. Certainly in the U.S., regime change has almost invariably culminated in a death knell for any war effort (FDR doesn't really count, as his VP succeeded to the POTUS, and the US army was within 50 miles of Berlin when FDR suffered his fatal stroke). But, e.g., Johnson to Nixon, and then Bush to Obama, produced a nightmarish drag on war efforts.

Indeed, McClellan had at least implied, if not openly asserted, that were he elected POTUS in 1864, he would pursue an armistice with the CSA (thus recognizing their legitimacy, and the separation of the CSA from the USA!). Lincoln certainly took this seriously, which would explain his encouragement of Sherman's destruction of Georgia. Lincoln felt he needed a rapid improvement in the prosecution of the war, with at least the appearance of inevitable CSA capitulation.

From a perspective of 150 years, it would appear that the overarching problem between McClellan and Lincoln was Lincoln's inability to articulate the strategy of the war as perceived by himself, and therefore McClellan's inability to approach the war as a federal official suppressing a traitorous revolt by upstart rebels. As a result, McClellan's dallying and failing to pursue Lee aggressively led to a tacit recognition of the validiity of the CSA military as a legitimate army. It was almost as if McClellan had de facto recognized the CSA as an entity. Which of course enraged Lincoln. And also explains why Lincoln was so deeply relieved when Grant finally took command along with Sherman, and advised Lincoln that they would approach this as an unconditional effort to suppress a revolution. Lincoln's statement that "This man fights!" was no casual comment; he needed a general who would chase the last active rebel to hell and back until every active rebel was hanged. McClellan was never of this mindset, even in the waning days of the war.

Body piercing is as old as civilization, and was practiced in almost all cultures, including the Vikings (which would of course include the Normans) as well as the Anglo-Saxons. It was a straightforward means of carrying personal wealth on one's person, and quickly came to signify status (like walking around with a wad of $100 bills thumbtacked on one's forehead). In the case of human chattel slaves, a noble, monarch, or other person of means could use enslaved persons to carry their enslaver's wealth for convenience.

Along the lines of financial value of the American colonies to the British Empire, the simple fact that Great Britain enjoyed a monopoly on colonial goods was huge. At the outbreak of the Revolution, the fear was that the colonies if independent would seek favored nation status with British rivals like the Bourbons (France and Spain) along with the United Provinces. In reality, the Revolution changed very little in terms of dealing with the Brits. The French Revolution soured relations with the U.S. remarkably rapidly.

But the reasons for the American Revolution had almost nothing to do with taxes. As pointed out previously, the taxes assessed to American colonists were chump change compared with what the British citizens were paying (and most Brits were also subject to "taxation without representation" as only about 3% of them had suffrage rights (had to be a land-owner in Great Britain in order to vote)). The true reasons for the American Revolution were two-fold: 1) the ongoing quartering of British soldiers in the northern colonies, with the ongoing threat of violence in the streets (along the lines of the Boston massacre), and 2) the threat of abolition of human chattel slavery in the wake of Sommersett v. Steuart at the Court of King's Bench in 1772, which potential absolutely enraged the southern American colonies, and led in turn to the Dunmore Declaration and subsequent escalation of hostilities in the American south.

It was only in the wake of the successful Revolution that leaders like the Adams cousins, Franklin, and Jefferson realized that the story of the Revolution would not sit well with subsequent generations of Americans, and concocted the "taxation without representation" chestnut that filled the history books of the next 50 years. In the last years of Adams and Jefferson, when they had more or less "reconciled," Adams begged Jefferson to come clean and tell the truth of why the southern colonies had joined Massachusetts in revolt. Jefferson politely but firmly refused, as he had spent the last 20 years of his life building a false legacy that endured until the last 25 years or so.

Antibiotics generally are all post-WWII, except sulfa, so what was really changing outcomes from wounds was non-antibiotic antimicrobials. Not splitting hairs here; the difference is significant. Already by the turn of the 19th-20th century, it was known that silver, for example, held profound antibacterial properties. Ehrlich's "Salvarsan", a combination of arsenic with organic compound, was considered a 'magic bullet' against syphilis by the first decade of the 20th century. And it was Henry Drysdale Dakin, working at a field hospital in France during WWI, that would forever change the science of wound care. Working in conjuncdtion with Alexis Carrel, a Nobel Prize-winning French surgeon, he found that a dilute sodium bichlorite solution (think Chlorox plus Alka-Seltzer) had dramatic, and I mean dramatic, bacteriocidal power, and by using a dilute form, he was able to avoid the injury of healthy tissue in the area around the wound (that problem had proved insurmountable in earlier efforts in the late 19th century using solutions like full-strength chlorox, which proved toxic to tissues).

Against the protestations of fellow surgeons of the multinational allied forces of the U.S., France, Great Britain and others, Dakin argued roundly against automatic amputation of open fractures (gunshots or explosions that produced bone fracture), and to the amazement of all (likely including Dakin himself!), he proved that one could heal an open fracture without infection, by keeping it soaked in "Dakin's solution." In 2022, Dakin's solution continues to be a mainstay in the most grossly-contaminated wounds (think gangrene and bed-sores) in terms of initiating healing and controlling odors (I think one would vastly prefer treating patients in an environment that smells of a commercial laundry, rather than a meat-packing dumpster).

So yes, credit Henry Dakin with the dramatic improvement in wound care during WWI and right up to today.

Prior to WWI, and dating back to the 'Crusades Era' to which you refer, there was known to be antiseptic (no one knew about the role of bacteria and fungi in infection prior to the 1870's or so), the other solution which demonstrated efficacy over and over again, was vinegar. There is a variant second verse to the old "Jack and Jill nursery rhyme, dating back at least to the late medieval period, that goes "Up Jack got and off did trot, as fast as he could caper, to Old Dame Trot, who patched his knot with vinegar and brown paper." [The "Old Dame Trot" reference is also of signficance in dating this verse, but at the risk of chasing you down yet another rabbit hole, I will simply direct you to google Trota of Salerno and read what you like]. At any rate, by the end of the medieval period, dilute vinegar was noted to have antiseptic properties in wounds, while again not producing dangerous damage to normal tissues in the wound area.

So vinegar became a mainstay in wound therapy throughout the early modern era up into the 19th century. It too still enjoys some cachet in modern wound therapy, but has perhaps been superceded by dilute forms of Dakin's solution.

Finally, the use of honey in wounds, which is almost certainly prehistoric, also continues to this day. has a unique efficacy and cost-efficiency, which makes it useful right up to 2022 in wound healing. Now the honey used is not typically over-the-counter from the condiment section of your local grocery, but rather is a formulation known as "leptosperrmum honey" or commercially as MediHoney (still quite sweet and flavorful, but specific for wound care). It tends to stimulate the normal host inflammatory response in a wound, thus separating out necrotic tissue from normal tissue over the course of several days.

So, credit Henry Dakin for sure with the advances during the 20th century. Further advances now in the past twenty years in wound therapy have resulted in the capability of healing wounds that a generation ago would have been considered unhealable, to being resolved in less than 60 days.

Along the lines of your question, Bart Ehrmann, who reads classical Greek and Latin fluently, comments about the margin notes in various early manuscripts of individual New Testament books, along the lines of "Do not alter this, it is important" and "I had to alter this because they used the wrong word," etc. This accounts for the 85,000 word discrepancy in a compilation that comprises 110,000 words.