Review of Medicine in First World War Europe: Soldiers, Medics, Pacifists by Fiona Reid. (original) (raw)

Canadian Bulletin of Medical History, 1990

For reasons that perhaps have much to do with anti-war socialization in the 1960s and 1970s, social historians of medicine have shied away from systematic study of the relations between medicine and war. Where their work has intersected the wars of this century, they have tended to concur with medical writers on the subject, perceiving war simply as good for medicine. This paper challenges that perception by questioning the causal framework in which the relationship between war and medicine has been set-a framework seen to reify both war and medicine. In addition to observing how military medicine existed in peacetime and, secondly, how wartime and peacetime medicine are not so easily demarcated, it argues that the theatres of war and medicine must be studied as part and parcel of the societies and cultures in which they were set, and that they must be seen as economically and ideologically constitutive with those societies. Pursued in this way, the study of war and medicine ceases to be epiphenomenal to the rest of history, and to the rest of the social history of medicine in particular. It becomes, instead, central to it.

The Great War and the birth of modern medicine

Scientia Militaria: South African Journal of Military Studies, 2022

Historians, journalists and writers often contrast the First World War with conflicts of previous centuries based on its highly industrialised nature and scale. They write how horse-drawn wagons and mounted infantry made way for highly mobile machines. They also note how industry, alongside government and society, cooperated more closely than before to build a growing number of new technologies. Such developments saw aircraft, tanks, submarines and chemical weapons make their military debut in this global conflict. Armies also carried out logistics and supply operations on a greater scale and over wider distances than before. In addition, belligerent nations mobilised more manpower and over greater geographical distances than ever before. The number of mutilated men and war dead due to the destructive power of weapons and munitions was also greater than ever experienced. Apart from the physically maimed, the psychological impact of the horrors of the war gained new proportions and intensity. For these reasons, it is hardly surprising that the conflict between 1914 and 1918 became known as the Great War since every aspect of the war occurred on a 'greater' scale. At the same time, the war can be described as 'great' due to its beneficial contribution to humankind-as unlikely as that might seem. Due to the war, a greater number of lives could be saved by medical personnel than claimed by hostilities if weighed on a balance sheet over the long term. The most recent experience of the viral pandemic was evidence of this when governments, physicians and scientists dusted off the lessons learned from a century past. But, unlike them, their predecessors often did not have such advantages at the turn of the twentieth century. The contributions of these men, and occasionally women, gave birth to modern medicine, as Thomas Helling's latest publication suggests.

Foreign medical help in Serbian liberation wars from 1912 until 1918

Archive of oncology, 2010

MeDiCal MiSSionS in The BalKan warS there is not too much data about the participation of foreign doctors and other medical workers, who, at the early beginning of Balkan wars, in response to the call from the serbian red cross or independently, came to serbia and montenegro and medically treated the wounded and the sick� according to the data from the serbian ministry of defense, shortly before the Balkan Wars there were in serbia only 370 doctors, of whom 296 were assigned to the battlefield, so that in the background there were only 74 left� from this number, 6 of the doctors had to be subtracted for working in central administration, doctors that were completely incompetent due to their age or illness (8) and doctors who had long left the medical practice (3), for the medical services in background, civilian and military, left only 57 doctors-the number includes 6 women (1)� of course, for a small country at war it was not enough, and the serbian red cross was forced to turn to foreign countries through the international red cross and to ask for assistance in the form of medical staff, medicines and medical supplies� the response was not long awaited, so that the serbian medical circumstances quickly improved significantly� adam stošić wrote that most medical experts were sent from russia (183), austria (36), england (20), holland (42), germany (12), hungary (10), italy (7), Belgium (9), denmark (4), norway (3), france (8), and some other countries, also sent their teams� at the end of 1912, in niš, there were at least fifteen doctors-volunteers from slovenia, and 17 members of the italian red cross mission in Belgrade� stošić facts that "total count in serbia in 1912-1913, was almost 300 members of foreign medical missions" (2), may have originated as a computational error, since only his figures show that there was a total of 334, of whom 120 doctors� a few data on the participation of foreign medical providers in the Balkan wars, on the serbian side, we meet in the records of hranislav m� joksimović (1878-1959), from the serbian red cross: "in the wars during 1912 and 1913, the committee of the red cross at its own expense employed about 20 doctors, among whom were two bacteriologists� also came the following foreign missions: 7 missions of the russian red cross, with 32 doctors, 57 nurses and 89 medical orderlies, Belgian, german, austrian, hungarian, the italian red cross, the British, french,-one of every (mission-ip) with 34 doctors, 36 nurses and 5 medical orderlies� in 1913, the russian red cross had sent 2 missions, the British and scottish red cross 1 mission, Belgian, danish, swedish, hungarian and dutch red cross 3 missions, of which one for control (suppression) of cholera in Čačak� each of them had 46 doctors, 66 nurses and 50 medical orderlies" (3)� however strong these seemed at the time, those figures were too small, given that one news in politika from 9-22 december 1912 showed that King petar Karađorđević (1844-1921) signed a decree on honoring 172 doctors with the order of st� sava of various degrees: 40 russians, 25 serbs on the side, 19 czechs, 9 frenchmen, germans and hungarians, 8 englishmen, danish and Belgians, 7 slovenians, 5 swiss and austrians, 4 norwegian, dutch and croatian, 3 romanian and swiss and 2 italians (4)� unfortunately, we do not know their names, because we could not "find" an official newspaper in which the decree was published, but from the news itself, it can be concluded that there were many more doctors and other medical staff, particularly "unawarded"� also, it should be noted that only Belgrade politika in its news from 18 october to the end of november 1912, recorded that in serbia and montenegro there were Foreign medical help in Serbian liberation wars from 1912 until 1918 ilija petrović SuMMary This work concerns involvement of the foreign medical missions during the Serbian Liberation Wars from 1912 until 1918, the work of their members immediately behind the front lines and in the back, healing of the wounded and the diseased, especially at the time of the great epidemics of typhoid fever, and also the efforts of numerous Serbian friends who collected the funds and material for equipping and sending of those missions. An American mission which came first to Serbia, soon after the beginning of the war operations and which was led by Dr. Edward Ryan, was specially mentioned. For many smaller of bigger missions, it is known that they acted in some of the Serbian war zones. A special attention was paid to the work of The Scottish Women's Hospital, its formation and means of funding, work in war conditions, attitudes towards wounded Serbs and posture during the Serbian retreat before the German, Austro-Hungarian and Bulgarian occupying armies. This text is largely the author's own view of his two books on medical assistance which the Serbs received from their friends from abroad (Medical Missions at Serbian Battlefields 1912-1918 and The Scottish Women with the Serbs 1914-1918). The first of these booklets contains a list with over 1350 names (of which, approximately 700 are the medical doctors), and the other 1230, were based on the author's personal inspection of the available literature and materials, significantly increased the official data of the Serbian Red Cross about the number of medical staff who reached Serbian battlefields: doubles them for the Balkan wars, while in the Great war they were at least five times greater.

Military Medicine (Early Modern)

Reading Early Medicine, 2019

e period covered by this project saw massive change in the conduct and character of war, with the advent of firearms-dominated conflict and the emergence of "modern" warfare. e la er is characterized by features that we still see in much armed conflict today: wars are fought by professional, centralized, standing armed forces fielded by nation-states; members of those armed forces are subject to systems of M P I W G

The response to the trench diseases in World War I: A triumph of public health science

Public Health, 2007

The recent 90-year anniversary of the Battle of the Somme presents an opportunity to examine the public health response to the trench diseases, new conditions which arose in the trenches of World War I. Throughout history, there have been two views of epidemic disease: the configurationist and contagionist perspectives. Most doctors responding to the trench diseases, 'contingentcontagionists', combined these two conceptions of disease. Because of the difficulty of finding a causative organism and the absence of effective treatment, the majority view became that these conditions were a product of the trench environment. Configurationism, with its emphasis on environmental and social determinants, seemed to provide the most obvious approaches for tackling the trench diseases. The diseases were effectively controlled using the tools of public health science: sanitary discipline and a battery of measures, such as improving trench construction, improving the diet, providing protective kit, regular bathing and treating lice infestation. The response demonstrates the triumph of public health science over new medical technologies. It also illustrates the importance of considering all the many determinants of health and of close surveillance, discipline and partnership working to counter ill-health. Although technology, training, doctrine and health beliefs change over time, the interaction between disease and environment remains the core challenge to public health practitioners.