Combat Surgeons

by John Laffin

To the press, the politicians and the generals, the tens of thousands of wounded that result from a modern large-scale battle are thought of as "casulaties". To the dedicated surgeons, doctors and their staff they are individuals in need of expert help. Throughout history, Armed Services doctors have faced not only appalling medical difficulties: they have also had to fight apathy, ignorance and hidebound conservatism to win better conditions and treatment for the fighting man. Many have had the misfortune to serve during eras when soldiers and sailors were considered as expendable as the missiles they used. Here is the full story of military medicine - from ancient, magical remedies, boiling oil to cauterize amputations, bleeding and leeching, to anaesthetics, blood transfusions, plastic surgery and life-saving drugs, inoculations and vaccinations. The narrative ranges from the Middle Ages to the conflicts of Vietnam, the Falklands and the Gulf, and examines the role of the combat surgeon in the age of nuclear, biological and chemical warfare.

Genres: History

256 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 1999

About the author

John Laffin was a prolific author with nearly 130 books to his name. Many of his books concerned military history.

Laffin's parents both served in WWI, his father in the 20th Battalion and his mother as a nurse. In 1940, aged 24, having worked with Smith's Weekly and The Wagga Advertiser, he enlisted in the 2nd AIF. He trained as an infantryman and later completed an officer course before serving in New Guinea. While convalescing in Sydney in 1943 he met his wife Hazelle.

After the war Laffin worked for a number of newspapers and magazines, wrote short novels and began his own feature service and editing unit. With his family he left for England in 1956 where he resided for nearly 40 years. He wrote articles for Australian newspapers and taught English, history and geography in secondary colleges.

Laffin traveled extensively in Europe, especially the Western Front areas of WWI and in the Middle East. He returned to Australia in 1995 but Hazelle developed heart problems and died in early 1997. He is survived by his two daughters, Bronwen and Pirenne, and a son, Craig.

Reviews

[Emma Deplores Goodreads Censorship · Rating 3 out of 5]

An informative history of combat medicine. I picked it up for the first few chapters on earlier historical time periods, but wound up reading the whole thing (admittedly, skimming some of the later chapters) because it’s pretty interesting. There’s something a little slapdash about it, such that I felt recognition rather than surprise on seeing that the author wrote 130 books and so presumably dashed this one off in a couple of months, but there’s still a lot of interesting detail and data. Laffin fought in WWII himself and displays a critical view of war and the way leaders and the public tend to ignore its human cost. But he’s also pretty old-school British Empire in that he doesn’t seem to see much problem with colonialism, and seems to view the British (and to a lesser extent, the French and Americans) as the only ones who mattered even when other countries’ combat medicine was ahead. Still, fairly useful reading if a bit gruesome in places.