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The Medical War: British Military Medicine in the First World War
The Medical War describes the role of medicine in the British Army during the First World War. Mark Harrison argues that medicine played a vital part in the war, helping to sustain the morale of troops and their families, and reducing the wastage of manpower. Effective medical provisions were vital to the continuation of the war in all the major theatres, for both political and operational reasons. The Medical War is divided more or less evenly between an analysis of medicine on the Western Front and selected campaigns in other theatres of the war, principally Mesopotamia, Gallipoli, Salonika, East Africa, and the Middle East. It explores preventive medicine and casualty disposal and treatment, attempting to view these not only from the perspective of medical personnel but also from that of commanders, patients, politicians, and the general public. In providing this wide-ranging geographical and thematic coverage of medicine, The Medical War is unique among books on medicine in the First World War. It also differs from existing work in considering the British Army's medical responsibilities for non-British troops and labourers, principally those of the Indian Army and various colonial labour detachments.
364 pages, Hardcover
First published November 1, 2010
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About the author
Mark Harrison
14 books5 followersMark Harrison is professor of the history of medicine and director of the Wellcome Unit for the History of Medicine, University of Oxford. His books include Medicine and Victory: British Military Medicine in the Second World War and The Medical War: British Military Medicine in the First World War, for each of which he was awarded the Templer Medal. He lives in Oxford, UK.
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There is more than one author in the Goodreads database with this name
Librarian note:
There is more than one author in the Goodreads database with this name
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Displaying 1 - 2 of 2 reviews
September 30, 2019
The British military experience in the First World War has been the subject of memoirs, histories, and narrow studies almost too numerous to count. Yet most of these works have concentrated on the course of the fighting and the experiences of the men on the front lines. Far less thoroughly examined has been their experiences after combat, when casualties were evacuated for healing and rehabilitation. In this award-winning study of British medical operations in the First World War, Mark Harrison takes a panoramic view of his subject, surveying the processes and care of the wounded to understand how they were cared for and how that care varied over the main fronts of the war.
As Harrison notes at the start of his book, attention to the treatment of wounded soldiers was still a fairly recent development. Starting with the Crimean War, the coverage of medical provisions by the popular press turned a previously neglected issue into one of political concern, forcing the army leadership to make provisions for it. These preliminary arrangements paled in compared to their German and French counterparts, however, and the development of what Harrison terms the “medical machine” really began only with the start of the war in 1914 and the initial discovery of the scope of the problem facing the military.
Harrison’s three chapters on medical operations on the Western Front form the heart of his book. The experience of the Royal Army Medical Corps (RAMC) reflected that of the British Army more generally, as the provisions at the start of the war soon gave way to a wholesale reorganization as the duration and scope of the conflict became evident. Much of Harrison’s focus here is on the process of “clearing the battlefield,” as evacuating casualties was the first and in many ways most important step in treating them. Taken first to casualty clearing stations before transportation to field hospitals, the wounded and dying were processed in an operation that adjusted to both the scale of the problem and the many demands upon finite resources. This was especially true in terms of transportation, as moving men and munitions to the front lines took priority over casualty evacuation. The nature of war on the Western Front also posed challenges, as medical personnel coped with the challenges of gas-gangrene and the use of poison gas as a weapon. While not uncritical, Harrison is generally complimentary of the men involved in running the medical services and describes a system that ran reasonably well from the Somme onward.
Though the Western Front is the main focus of Harrison’s work, he does not neglect the other main theaters in which British troops fought. Here the picture is similar, as transportation quickly emerged as the primary problem at both Gallipoli and early in the Mesopotamian campaign. In some of these campaigns there was less time for adaptation, but when such time did exist reforms followed the models established on the Western Front. Yet soldiers fighting in Africa and the Near East faced the added problem of tropical diseases, which posed additional strains upon medical services that were not always successfully addressed.
Nevertheless, Harrison concludes his book by giving the British medical services and their personnel high marks for the professionalism and efficiency under the circumstances of their time. Similar praise is warranted for his book, which draws upon both organizational records and secondary sources to describe the performance of British military medicine in the First World War. While limited in its study of both medical procedures and the social history of the men and women who worked in the various facilities, it is nonetheless a fine survey of its subject, one that is absolutely indispensable for anyone seeking to understand this very important yet too often neglected aspect of the British military effort during the First World War.
As Harrison notes at the start of his book, attention to the treatment of wounded soldiers was still a fairly recent development. Starting with the Crimean War, the coverage of medical provisions by the popular press turned a previously neglected issue into one of political concern, forcing the army leadership to make provisions for it. These preliminary arrangements paled in compared to their German and French counterparts, however, and the development of what Harrison terms the “medical machine” really began only with the start of the war in 1914 and the initial discovery of the scope of the problem facing the military.
Harrison’s three chapters on medical operations on the Western Front form the heart of his book. The experience of the Royal Army Medical Corps (RAMC) reflected that of the British Army more generally, as the provisions at the start of the war soon gave way to a wholesale reorganization as the duration and scope of the conflict became evident. Much of Harrison’s focus here is on the process of “clearing the battlefield,” as evacuating casualties was the first and in many ways most important step in treating them. Taken first to casualty clearing stations before transportation to field hospitals, the wounded and dying were processed in an operation that adjusted to both the scale of the problem and the many demands upon finite resources. This was especially true in terms of transportation, as moving men and munitions to the front lines took priority over casualty evacuation. The nature of war on the Western Front also posed challenges, as medical personnel coped with the challenges of gas-gangrene and the use of poison gas as a weapon. While not uncritical, Harrison is generally complimentary of the men involved in running the medical services and describes a system that ran reasonably well from the Somme onward.
Though the Western Front is the main focus of Harrison’s work, he does not neglect the other main theaters in which British troops fought. Here the picture is similar, as transportation quickly emerged as the primary problem at both Gallipoli and early in the Mesopotamian campaign. In some of these campaigns there was less time for adaptation, but when such time did exist reforms followed the models established on the Western Front. Yet soldiers fighting in Africa and the Near East faced the added problem of tropical diseases, which posed additional strains upon medical services that were not always successfully addressed.
Nevertheless, Harrison concludes his book by giving the British medical services and their personnel high marks for the professionalism and efficiency under the circumstances of their time. Similar praise is warranted for his book, which draws upon both organizational records and secondary sources to describe the performance of British military medicine in the First World War. While limited in its study of both medical procedures and the social history of the men and women who worked in the various facilities, it is nonetheless a fine survey of its subject, one that is absolutely indispensable for anyone seeking to understand this very important yet too often neglected aspect of the British military effort during the First World War.
June 21, 2019
Very good, informative book about the successes and failures of British medical services in WW1. So much of WW1 history is focused on the Western Front that others are sometimes forgotten. It was very interesting to learn about the different challenges faced by the medical staff in the different theaters of war. Some of these obstacles led to innovations in medical organization and treatment. Some of the obstacles were the presumptions, stubbornness, and inability to adapt of the commanders. The hubris of some of the commanders never ceases to amaze me. Unfortunately, it led to many thousands of lives needlessly lost on all fronts.
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