Download or read book Wars Pestilence the Surgeon s Blade written by Thomas Scotland and published by Helion Studies in Military His. This book was released on 2013 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Wars in the 19th Century were accompanied by a very heavy loss of life from infectious diseases. Typhus fever, dysentery, malaria, typhoid fever and yellow fever caused many more deaths than wounds inflicted by enemy actions. During the Peninsular War, for example, for every soldier dying of a wound, four succumbed to disease. This book examines the development and evolution of surgical practice against this overwhelming risk of death due to disease. It reviews three major conflicts during this time: the Peninsular War, the Crimean War and the Boer War and also considers many minor wars fought by the British Empire in the intervening years, and highlights significant medical and surgical developments during these conflicts. War surgery in the first part of the 19th Century was brutal and it had to be carried out swiftly. It was performed at speed because there were no anesthetics and the wounded often died during the procedure. Surgeons focused their attention on wounds of the arms and legs, because limbs were both easily accessible to the surgeon (unlike organs inside the abdomen and chest) and lent themselves well to amputation. This was commonly the operation of choice for many war wounds of arms and legs. Some surgeons performed more difficult surgical procedures to try to preserve the limbs and attempted to repair damaged tissues but these operations took longer and caused greater suffering to the patient. Abdominal and chest wounds were not treated since surgeons did not have the means, the ability, or the understanding, to cut into the abdomen and chest to repair the damaged organs successfully. An important development, which contributed to surgery moving forwards, was the discovery of general anesthesia, which became available in time for the Crimean War. However, whilst it certainly rendered operations pain-free, it was associated with significant numbers of deaths during surgery on wounded soldiers because of the poorly understood effects that anesthetics had, particularly on the heart. As a result, operative surgery did not extend its scope a great deal, and military surgery remained focused on surgery of the limbs. However, fewer amputations were performed during the Boer War at the end of this period. Britain sent observers to several wars in which it was not involved to learn military lessons and to understand the medical and surgical aspects of war. The American Civil War and the Franco Prussian War were two such conflicts. The Russo Japanese War resulted in a very significant advance in surgery for abdominal wounds, but Western observers either failed to notice or ignored pioneering work performed by a Russian female surgeon called Vera Gedroits. As a result, when the Great War began in 1914, lessons had to be re-learned by British surgeons, and many soldiers who suffered penetrating abdominal wounds lost their lives when they should have survived. Unfortunately, one of the hallmarks of war surgery is that successive generations of surgeons make the same mistakes as their forebears and the same lessons have to be learned time and again.

Download or read book War Law and Humanity written by James Crossland and published by Bloomsbury Publishing. This book was released on 2018-06-28 with total page 280 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: War, Law and Humanity tells the story of the transatlantic campaign to either mitigate the destructive forces of the battlefield, or prevent wars from being waged altogether, in the decades prior to the disastrous summer of 1914. Starting with the Crimean War of the 1850s, James Crossland traces this campaign to control warfare from the scandalous barracks of Scutari to the shambolic hospitals of the American Civil War, from the bloody sieges of Paris and Erzurum to the combative conference halls of Geneva and The Hague, uncovering the intertwined histories of a generation of humanitarians, surgeons, pacifists and utopians who were shocked into action by the barbarism and depravities of war. By examining the fascinating personal accounts of these figures, Crossland illuminates the complex motivations and influential actions of those committed to the campaign to control war, demonstrating how their labours built the foundation for the ideas – enshrined in our own times as international norms – that soldiers need caring for, weapons need restricting and wars need rules.

Download or read book Battle scarred written by David J. Appleby and published by Manchester University Press. This book was released on 2018-07-31 with total page 389 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Battle-scarred investigates the human costs of the British Civil Wars. Through a series of varied case studies it examines the wartime experience of disease, burial, surgery and wounds, medicine, hospitals, trauma, military welfare, widowhood, desertion, imprisonment and charity. The percentage population loss in these conflicts was far higher than that of the two World Wars, which renders the Civil Wars arguably the most unsettling experience the British people have ever undergone. The volume explores its themes from new angles, demonstrating how military history can broaden its perspective and reach out to new audiences.

Download or read book Understanding the Somme 1916 written by Thomas Scotland and published by Helion and Company. This book was released on 2014-10-19 with total page 278 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This is a guidebook with a difference. It is not a list of memorials and cemeteries. Its aim is to provide the reader with an understanding of the Battle of the Somme. There were some partial successes; there were many disastrous failures. In 17 concise chapters dealing with different areas of the battlefield and various aspects of strategy, this book explains what happened in each location and why. Each chapter is accompanied by color photographs, taken by the authors in the course of many visits to the Somme, which will illustrate, illuminate and allow the reader to understand important points made in the text. It doesn`t matter whether you are in your armchair, on foot, on a bicycle, or in a car, this book will effortlessly transport you to the battlefield and will sweep you round the front line of 1 July 1916. From Montauban in the south, to Serre in the north, it will lead you to the night attack of 14 July and to the first use of tanks on 15 September. It will take you to the Pozières Ridge and to Mouquet Farm, and to the heights above the Ancre. You will visit the famous Sunken Lane near Beaumont Hamel, where the text will transport you in time to stand with men from the 1st Lancashire Fusiliers waiting to go over the top on 1 July 1916. You will look towards Hawthorn Mine Crater and almost feel the earth tremble beneath your feet as though you were there at 07.20 hrs. on 1 July 1916. You will go into Beaumont Hamel with the 51st (Highland) Division and climb up Wagon Road. You will look across to where Frankfurt Trench once was, and where men from the 16th Highland Light Infantry from Glasgow fought a last ditch battle, having become marooned in the trench, in what was the last action to take place before the Somme finally petered out in the mud in late November 1916. With its focus on informing and illuminating the events of 1916 on the Somme, and illustrated throughout by carefully annotated color photographs showing the sites today, this book will prove equally essential to the battlefield visitor or the 'virtual visitor' in their armchair.

Download or read book An Equal Burden written by Jessica Meyer and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2019 with total page 239 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: An Equal Burden forms the first scholarly study of the Army Medical Services in the First World War to focus on the roles and experiences of the men of the ranks of the Royal Army Medical Corps (RAMC). These men, through their work as stretcher bearers and orderlies, provided a range of labour, both physical and emotional, in aid of the sick and wounded. They were not professional medical caregivers, yet were called upon to provide medical care, however rudimentary; they served in uniform, under military discipline, yet were forbidden, as non-combatants, from carrying weapons. Their service as men in wartime, was thus unique. Structured both chronologically and thematically, this study examines both the work that RAMC rankers undertook and its importance to the running of the chain of medical evacuation. It additionally explores the gendered status of these men within the medical, military and cultural hierarchies of a society engaged in total war, locating their service within the context of that of doctors, female nurses and combatant servicemen. Through close readings of official documents, personal papers, and cultural representations, both verbal and visual, it argues that the ranks of the RAMC formed a space in which non-commissioned servicemen, through their many roles, defined and redefined medical caregiving as men's work in wartime.

Download or read book Language Change and Nineteenth Century Science written by Catherine Watts and published by Taylor & Francis. This book was released on 2023-06-05 with total page 236 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Have you ever looked at a word and thought: ‘I wonder where that came from’? You might well find the answer in this book, which considers the origin and formation of some of the many thousands of new words that were coined in English during the nineteenth century in the broad field of ‘science’. Changes in society are often accompanied by the need to find names for such changes which, in turn, has an impact on how the language develops as a result. The British Industrial Revolution ushered in a new era of language change, which led to many new coinages in the English language reflecting scientific knowledge as it developed. Many of these neologisms belong to specialist vocabulary, but others do not, and it is these lay coinages which form the focus of this book and are located within their social, cultural and historical backgrounds. Aimed at postgraduate students of the English language and all those interested in the history of the English language, this work explores new worlds and offers an original and fascinating etymological journey through nineteenth-century science in its broadest sense.

Download or read book The Professions State and the Market written by Mike Saks and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2015-06-05 with total page 170 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This unique book enhances our understanding of the links between professions, the state and the market – and their implications for the public in terms of professional practice. In so doing, the book adopts a neo-Weberian perspective, in which professions are seen as a form of exclusionary social closure based on legal boundaries established by the state. To illustrate the overarching theme, the book considers how healthcare in general, and medicine in particular as a form of professional work, is organized in public and private arenas in three societies with different socio-political philosophies - namely, Britain, the United States and Russia. As such, it examines the varying extent to which the development of independent professional organizations has been enhanced or restricted in public, as compared to more privatized social contexts. The comparative perspective adopted in this book thereby provides insight into the organization of professional work in different contexts and the all-important effects of this on delivery to the public. This book will be of particular interest to scholars, researchers and students of Management, Public Policy and Health Care.

Download or read book Pestilence Insanity and Trees written by John M. Harris Jr. and published by Taylor & Francis. This book was released on 2023-12-01 with total page 397 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This is the first full-length biography of New York surgeon and social activist Stephen Smith (1823–1922), who was appointed to fifty years of public service by three mayors, seven governors, and two U.S. presidents. The book presents the complex life of Stephen Smith, a consistent figure in the history of public health, mental health, housing reform in New York, and even urban reforestation. Utilizing Smith’s writings, public records, and recently discovered personal correspondence, this research shows how Smith succeeded where others failed. It also acknowledges that Smith was unsuccessful in convincing his fellow professionals to fight for a cabinet level public health department or to resist the rise of custodial care for the mentally impaired. Given Smith’s many accomplishments, the book asks us to consider if what stopped him stops us, highlighting the relevance of Smith’s story to contemporary debates. Pestilence, Insanity, and Trees is a readable and well-documented narrative and a resource for students and scholars, filling gaps in the history of American medicine, public health, mental health, and New York social reform.

Download or read book Lifesavers and Body Snatchers written by Tim Cook and published by Penguin. This book was released on 2022-09-13 with total page 419 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: *FINALIST FOR THE 2023 OTTAWA BOOK AWARD* *SHORTLISTED FOR THE 2022 TEMPLER MEDAL FOR BEST BOOK* From Canada’s top war historian, a definitive medical history of the Great War, illuminating how the carnage of modern battle gave birth to revolutionary life-saving innovations. It brings to light shocking revelations of the ways the brutality of combat and the necessity of agonizing battlefield decisions led to unimaginable strain for men and women of medicine who fought to save the lives of soldiers. Medical care in almost all armies during the Great War, and especially in the Canadian medical services, was sophisticated and constantly evolving. Vastly more wounded soldiers were saved than lost. Doctors and surgeons prevented disease from decimating armies, confronted ghastly wounds from chemical weap-ons, remade shattered bodies, and struggled to ease soldiers’ battle-haunted minds. After the war, the hard lessons learned by doctors and nurses were brought back to Canada. A new Department of Health created guidelines in the aftermath of the 1918–1919 influ-enza pandemic, which had killed 55,000 Canadians and millions around the world. In a grim irony, the fight to improve civilian health was furthered by the most destructive war up to that point in human history. But medical advances were not the only thing brought back from Europe: Lifesavers and Body Snatchers exposes the disturbing story of the harvesting of human body parts in medical units behind the lines. Tim Cook has spent over a decade investigating the history of Canadian medical doctors removing the body parts of slain soldiers and transporting their brains, lungs, bones, and other organs to the Royal College of Surgeons (RCS) in London, England. Almost 800 individual body parts were removed from the dead and sent to London, where they were stored, treated, and presented in exhibition galleries. After being exhibited there, the body parts were displayed in Canada. This uncovered history has never been told before and is part of the hidden legacy of the medical war. Based on deep archival research and unpublished letters of soldiers and medical personnel, Lifesavers and Body Snatchers is a powerful narrative, told in Cook’s literary style, which reveals how the medical services supported the soldiers at the front and forged a profound legacy in shaping Canadian public health in the decades that followed.

Download or read book 1666 Plague War and Hellfire written by Rebecca Rideal and published by Macmillan. This book was released on 2016-10-18 with total page 304 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: 1666 was a watershed year for England. An outbreak of the Great Plague, the eruption of the second Dutch War, and the devastating Great Fire of London all struck the country in rapid succession and with devastating repercussions. Shedding light on these dramatic events and their context, historian Rebecca Rideal reveals an unprecedented period of terror and triumph. Based in original archival research drawing on little-known sources, 1666 opens with the fiery destruction of London before taking readers on a thrilling journey through a crucial turning point in English history as seen through the eyes of an extraordinary cast of historical characters. While the central events of this significant year were ones of devastation and defeat, 1666 also offers a glimpse of the incredible scientific and artistic progress being made at that time, from Isaac Newton’s discovery of gravity to the establishment of The London Gazette. It was in this year that John Milton completed Paradise Lost, Frances Stewart posed for the iconic image of Britannia, and a young architect named Christopher Wren proposed a plan for a new London—a stone phoenix to rise from the charred ashes of the old city. With flair and style, 1666 exposes readers to a city and a country on the cusp of modernity and a series of events that altered the course of history.

Download or read book A Surgeon s Civil War written by Daniel M. Holt and published by Kent State University Press. This book was released on 1991-05-31 with total page 326 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Daniel M. Holt, a successful country doctor in the upstate village of Newport, New York, accepted the position of assistant surgeon in the 121st New York Volunteer Army in August 1862. At age 42 when he was commissioned, he was the oldest member of the staff. But his experience served him well, as his regiment participated in nearly all the major campaigns in the eastern theater of the war--Crampton's Gap before Antietam, Fredericksburg, Salem Church, the Mine Run campaign, the Wilderness, Spotsylvania, Cold Harbor, Petersburg, the 1864 Shenandoah Valley campaign, and Appomattox. In A Surgeon's Civil War, the educated and articulate Holt describes camp life, army politics, and the medical difficulties that he and his colleagues experienced. His reminiscences and letters provide an insider's look at medicine as practiced on the battlefield and offer occasional glimpses of the efficacy of Surgeon General William A. Hammond's reforms as they affected Holt's regiment. He also comments on other subjects, including slavery and national events. Holt served until October 17, 1864 when ill health forced him to resign.

Download or read book Desperate Surgery in the Pacific War written by Thomas Helling, M.D. and published by McFarland. This book was released on 2017-01-25 with total page 475 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Caring for the wounded in the World War II Pacific Theater posed serious challenges to doctors and surgeons. The thick jungles, remote atolls and heavily defended Japanese islands of the Pacific presented dangers to medical personnel never before encountered in modern warfare, as did the devastating new kamikaze attacks. Sophisticated treatments, including complex surgery, were by necessity far removed from the fighting, requiring front line doctors to do the minimum--often under fire--to stabilize patients until they could be evacuated: "damage control," it would later be called. Navy doctors responsible for thousands of sailors aboard fleets in battle found caring for the wounded daunting or nearly impossible. Yet to save lives, medical resources had to be kept as close as possible to the action. This book systematically details the efforts and innovations of the doctors and surgeons who worked to preserve life under extreme peril.

Download or read book Poxed and Scurvied written by Kevin Brown and published by Seaforth Publishing. This book was released on 2011-05-30 with total page 263 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: When European sailors began to explore the rest of the world, the problem of keeping healthy on such long voyages became acute. Malnourishment and crowded conditions bred disease, but they also carried epidemics that decimated the indigenous populations they encountered – and brought back new diseases like syphilis. As navies developed, the well-being of crews became a dominant factor in the success of naval operations, so it is no surprise that the Royal Navy led the way in shipboard medical provision, and sponsored many of the advances in diet and hygiene which by the Napoleonic Wars gave its fleets a significant advantage over all its enemies. These improvements trickled down to the merchant service, but the book also looks at two particularly harsh maritime environments, the slave trade and emigrant ships, both of which required special medical arrangements. Eventually, the struggle to improve the fitness of seamen became a national concern, manifest in a series of far-reaching – and sometimes bizarre – public health measures, generally directed against the effects of drunkenness and the pox. In this way, as in many others, an attempt to address the specific needs of the seafarer developed wider implications for society as a whole. It also produced scientific breakthroughs that were a universal benefit, so far from being a narrow study of medicine at sea, this book provides a fascinating picture of social improvement.

Download or read book Civil War America 1850 To 1875 written by Richard F. Selcer and published by Infobase Publishing. This book was released on 2014-05-14 with total page 561 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Features essays, statistical data, period photographs, maps, and documents.

Download or read book American Surgical Instruments written by James M. Edmonson and published by Norman Publishing. This book was released on 1997 with total page 396 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

Download or read book Pepys s Navy written by J. D. Davies and published by Seaforth Publishing. This book was released on 2008-11-20 with total page 304 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This new reference book describes every aspect the English navy in the second half of the seventeenth century, from the time when the Fleet Royal was taken into Parliamentary control after the defeat of Charles I, until the accession of William and Mary in 1689 when the long period of war with the Dutch came to an end. This is a crucial era which witnessed the creation of a permanent naval service, in essence the birth of the Royal Navy. Every aspect of the navy is covered - naval administration, ship types and shipbuilding, naval recruitment and crews, seamanship and gunnery, shipboard life, dockyards and bases, the foreign navies of the period, and the three major wars which were fought against the Dutch in the Channel and the North Sea. Samuel Pepys, whose thirty years of service did so much to replace the ad hoc processes of the past with systems for construction and administration, is one of the most significant players, and the navy which was, by 1690, ready for the 100 years of global struggle with the French owed much to his tireless work. This book is destined to become a major work for historians, naval enthusiasts and, indeed, anyone with an interest in this colourful era of the seventeenth century.

Download or read book Publishing and Medicine in Early Modern England written by Elizabeth Lane Furdell and published by University Rochester Press. This book was released on 2002 with total page 308 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: An investigation of the role which the English book trade played in an important transitional period in early modern medicine.