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

by Fiona Reid (Author)

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.

Author Biography

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).