Projecting Soldiers' Repair: The 'Great War' Lantern and the Royal Society of Medicine (original) (raw)
Related papers
This article examines how the dental and surgical communities treating facial injuries during the First World War used photography for scientific education, to exchange, debate, and disseminate methods and ideas on facial reconstruction. Following the turn to practices, materials, and networks of knowledge in recent photographic history, this article explores how photographs enabled surgeons to identify, recognize, and accurately assess a range of facial injuries and surgical procedures and allowed surgeons to think about their practice and methods of treatment, and then critique courses of action within the larger group. To determine the specific role played by photographs in shaping networks of knowledge and interrelationships between medical societies, the article will explore how groups of surgeons used photographs at meetings, lectures and in medical journals to communicate facts about facial injuries to the wider surgical profession. Photography was part of the flow of information within the scientific exchange system. Within the context of surgical lectures and meetings held at the Royal Society of Medicine and Royal College of Surgeons by the British Dental and Medical Associations between 1914 and 1920, photography increasingly played a part in framing interaction between groups of surgeons, including Franco-British exchanges. In conclusion, this article argues that photographs became active performers in the dissemination of surgical knowledge and meaning on facial reconstructive surgery during the First World War and were integral in the shaping of medical thinking.
This article focuses on one specific way that photographic artifacts can contribute to our understanding of the interactions and relationships between technological practices and ways of seeing and knowing in a particular historical context. It explores how surgeons originally read and used photography, and traces the medium's emergence into a medical discourse that, through the years of the First World War, changed from one primarily carried in language, written and spoken, to one that necessarily included illustrations and specifically photography. This article examines how the previously separate professions of dentistry and surgery participated in a process of exchange that utilized photography to convey scientific ideas and facts across disciplines. Photographs were integral to a reconceptualization of medical practice. What role did photography play in framing interaction between groups of surgeons and shaping inter-relationships between dentistry and surgery? How did photography help to constitute the practices of dentistry and surgery by setting up participation between these previously separate medical disciplines? What relationship did imaging technology have to the strength of the bonds among those sharing the images? How did photography consolidate and expand this new surgical network?
When Britain went to war in 1914, the British Expeditionary Force was deployed without a single dentist. Initially considered combatants, the only dental professionals who could serve at the Front were medically qualified dental surgeons in the Royal Army Medical Corps. In treating the traumatic facial and jaw injuries caused by trench warfare, the dental surgeons of this era earned their place on specialist surgical teams and established the principles of oral and maxillofacial surgery. This article will examine the contribution of specialist dental surgeons to the management of facial and jaw wounds in the First World War along the chain of evacuation from the battlefield to the home front using illustrative examples from the Hunterian Museum at the Royal College of Surgeons of England.
Wounded: ‘A small Scar will be much discerned’: treating facial wounds in early modern Britain
Science Museum Group Journal, 2019
This article examines the treatment of facial wounds in early modern Britain through a close study of the casebook of St Bartholomew’s Hospital surgeon Joseph Binns (d. 1664). It explores surgeons’ and related practitioners’ special attention to the care and infliction of facial wounds and scarring in their practice, including impairments to facial movement and expression, the use of specific suturing techniques and the reduced use of stitches, and the development of agglutinative medicaments. The face was recognised as a site of immense vulnerability and exposure, requiring particular care, and this vulnerability was mirrored in the capacity for facial scarring to detrimentally advertise a practitioner’s skill. This essay reads Binns’ unpublished notes against the cases and theoretical ideals set out in published texts from surgeons such as the Scottish Alexander Read, the East India Company surgeon John Woodall, and the London surgeon and physician Daniel Turner. I argue that both the textbooks and Binns’ practice demonstrate awareness of the special role of the face in the early modern period, and that this guided the medical approach to disfiguring injuries and conditions.
S urgery is a profession defined by its authority to cure by means of bodily invasion. The brutality and risks of opening a living person's body have long been apparent, the benefits only slowly and haltingly worked out. Nonetheless, over the past two centuries, surgery has become radically more effective , and its violence substantially reduced — changes that have proved central to the development of mankind's abilities to heal the sick. Surger y befor e the A dv en t of A ne s the si a The first volume of the New England Journal of Medicine and Surgery, and the Collateral Branches of Science, published in 1812, gives a sense of the constraints faced by surgeons, and the mettle required of patients, in the era before anesthesia and antisepsis. In the April issue for that year, John Collins Warren, surgeon at the Massachusetts General Hospital and son of one of the founders of Harvard Medical School, published a case report describing a new approach to the treatment of cataracts. 1 Until that time, the prevalent method of cataract treatment was " couching, " a procedure that involved inserting a curved needle into the orbit and using it to push the clouded lens back and out of the line of sight. 2 Warren's patient had undergone six such attempts without lasting success and was now blind. Warren undertook a more radical and invasive procedure — actual removal of the left cataract. He described the operation, performed before the students of Harvard Medical School, as follows: The eyelids were separated by the thumb and finger of the left hand, and then, a broad cornea knife was pushed through the cornea at the outer angle of the eye, till its point approached the opposite side of the cornea. The knife was then withdrawn, and the aqueous humour being discharged, was immediately followed by a protrusion of the iris.
Plastic Surgery Pioneers of the Central Powers in the Great War
Craniomaxillofacial Trauma & Reconstruction, 2018
Plastic surgical techniques were described in antiquity and the Middle Ages; however, the genesis of modern plastic surgery is in the early 20th century. The exigencies of trench warfare, combined with medical and technological advances at that time, enabled pioneers such as Sir Harold Gillies to establish what is now recognized as plastic and reconstructive surgery. The physicians of Germany, Russia, and the Ottoman Empire were faced with the same challenges; it is fascinating to consider parallel developments in these countries. A literature review was performed relating to the work of Esser, Lanz, Joseph, Morestin, and Filatov. Their original textbooks were reviewed. We describe the clinical, logistical, and psychological approaches to managing plastic surgical patients of these physicians and compare and contrast them to those of the Allies, identifying areas of influence such as Gillies’ adoption of Filatov's tube pedicle flap.
Under the Surgical Drape: A dissection of the History of Surgery
The etymology behind surgeon is derived from the Greek phrase cheir, “hand” ergon, “work.” The surgery that we know and take for granted today took thousands of years of blood, guts, limbs and amputations of trial and error to cultivate. Surgical procedures have been performed since antiquity. Civilization and surgery, in fact, go hand-in-hand and are just as old as each other. Given the time frame and our woeful ignorance, many of us believe that medicine in the past, let alone surgery, was particularly primitive and thus we give less credit than is due. On the contrary, however, the practices and procedures were more sophisticated than many of us would want to believe. This paper will investigate the history of surgery and while the topic is broad in outlook, the intent is not to go beyond the latter half of the 19th century. Even within the past few decades, like so many other disciplines; medicine, science and technology has advanced exponentially. In consideration of the sheer documentation within the 20th century, let alone the latter half, it would be a daunting and overwhelming task to cover the entirety of surgery. A few broad sweeps will be made to give the reader a general outlook and appreciation of the surgeon, including the field’s many shortcomings and advancements. The distinctive path of the surgeon would eventually refine and develop it into a refined craft. At the heart of the story of the surgeon, a number of characters and surgeons will be examined including the Priest-Physician, the Barber-Surgeon, the Accoucheur and eventually the professional surgeon. While our conception and perceptions of the surgeon is that of a prestigious and affluent profession, they had humble beginnings. The surgical drape will be unraveled and the blood and guts underneath will be examined and understood.
Scientia Militaria: South African Journal of Military Studies, 2022
Faces from the front is not a fresh title recently hitting the shelves. The publication originally appeared in late 2017 with a reprint appearing earlier this year. The deceitfully 'thin-looking' publication contains unbounded treasures, which could be attributed to the author's passion for the subject clearly shining through. Andrew Bamji is not your average journalist or hobby writer turned amateur historian, but a physician in rheumatology by training, a published author, and a consultant archivist and researcher. In writing the book, Bamji drew from an estimated 2 500 case files, personal communication with a variety of individuals, and secondary literature. Given the depth of research, it is hardly surprising that the book has received much praise since its initial appearance and even won some awards, including the prestigious British Medical Association Medical Book Awards category 'Basis of medicine' in 2018. 599 However, is such significant acclaim warranted, especially from a historian's perspective? All too often some popular history writer makes it to some best seller or must-read list but is riddled with over-exaggeration, oversimplification or inaccuracies.