Medicine in First World War Europe: Soldiers, Medics, Pacifists

Description

The casualty rates of the First World War were unprecedented: approximately 10 million combatants were wounded from Britain, France and Germany alone. In consequence, military-medical services expanded and the war ensured that medical professionals became firmly embedded within the armed services. In a situation of total war civilians on the home front came into more contact than before with medical professionals, and even pacifists played a significant medical role. Medicine in First World War Europe re-visits the casualty clearing stations and the hospitals of the First World War, and tells the stories of those who were most directly involved: doctors, nurses, wounded men and their families. Fiona Reid explains how military medicine interacts with the concerns, the cultures and the behaviours of the civilian world, treating the history of wartime military medicine as an integral part of the wider social and cultural history of the First World War.

Fiona Reid is Head of Arts and Humanities at Newman University, Birmingham, where she teaches modern European History. She is the author of Broken Men: Shell Shock, Treatment and Recovery in Britain, 1914-1930 and a co-author (with Sharif Gemie and Laure Humbert) of Outcast Europe: Refugees and Relief Workers in an Era of Total War, 1936-1948 (2011).

[An] excellent history that will interest scholars of the First World War, the history of medicine, and modern European history more generally ... [Reid's] encyclopedic survey of the relevant history and scholarship on these topics is deeply impressive ... [She] has rendered exceptionally well the sort of service historians owe both to their readers and to the people who make and live the history we read. * EuropeNow * [The] controversies over war and masculinity that surrounded pacifists who volunteered as stretcher-bearers at the front should put it on undergraduate reading lists. * CHOICE * An excellent and thought-provoking addition to the historiography of medicine during the First World War ... It is a must read for any scholar of either subject. * Annals of Science * Fiona Reid's anecdotal approach to her topic has yielded an engaging study ... it definitely merits careful reading and reflection. * Michigan War Studies Review * A welcome contribution to the historiography of medicine in the First World War ... Reid convincingly demonstrates that the relationship between medicine, war and soldiers had many layers. * European History Quarterly * Resulting from my deep interest in the relationship between war and medicine, especially the First World War, I have read quite a number of books on the subject. Fiona Reid's Medicine in First World War Europe definitely ranks among the best, also because of the attention to the far too often neglected, but highly interesting and important phenomenon of medical pacifism. * Leo van Bergen, Dutch Veterans Institute/Netherlands Institute for Military History, The Netherlands * Medicine in First World War Europe is an important addition to the growing literature on First World War medical services. Fiona Reid introduces the key questions and ideas relating to this vital area of First World War studies, supporting her narrative and analysis with thoughtfully selected further reading lists. This is a must read for undergraduates or postgraduates studying the history of medicine in modern Europe or the social and cultural history of the First World War. * Jessica Meyer, University Academic Fellow in Legacies of War, University of Leeds, UK * Fiona Reid's wonderful work uncovers the fascinating and often hidden histories of the medical experience during the First World War. By focusing on personal experiences in Britain, Germany and France, she shows us that whilst the exigencies of industrial warfare were paramount, medicine in wartime was shaped and negotiated by both the individual and the personal, by both the carer and the patient. Reid shows us that the results were messy and complex, but always compelling * Wendy Gagen, Independent Scholar, UK *