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Medicine and its links with War and Chance
This list is intended to provide a range of examples of the way that
war and chance have been linked to medicine over time. The list will be
updated as I teach different periods of the course to this years cohort.
| The Prehistoric period |
Cave paintings show us that operations were carried
out on injuries sustained in fighting.
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| The Ancient World |
Developing battlefield technology led to new surgical techniques:
surgeons learnt methods of treating not only wounds from arrows, swords
and other edged weapons but also developed treatments for burns sustained
as a result of the use of Greek Fire, oils etc.
The Romans built military hospitals like the one at Inchtuthil, Scotland.
Roman
forts incorporated bathhouses, sewers etc.
Vegetius
(Roman c400AD) writes of unsuitable sites for the Roman Army to set
up camp.
Sekhmet
– goddess of war
Alexander
the Great's conquests lead to the spread of ideas (Egypt >
Mesopotamia > India).
Romanisation leads to the introduction of public health works and
the building of roads.
AD110: Trajan’s
column – shows roman medics at work.
Fall of Rome: destruction of western European libraries, hospitals
etc.
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| Medieval |
The Crusades led to a spread of ideas. Islamic
practices were brought into Europe and the books of the Ancient
Greeks which had been lost to the western world were reintroduced.
The Hundred years war is losely linked to the spread of the Black
Death.
Mongol use of ‘germ
warfare’
13th century: Theodoric
of Lucca writes that warfare is changing so quickly that ‘every
day we see new instruments and new methods being invented by clever
and ingenious surgeons.’ He and his father, Hugh of Lucca, introduce
the use of wine as an antiseptic.
Wound
Man illustrations are used by battlefield surgeons.
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| The Renaissance |
1536, Turin: Ambroise
Pare, a young army surgeon, runs out of cauterising oil during
battle. Desperate to provide some kind of care, he quickly creates
a lotion from the available materials. Fearful that his patients would
die overnight he wakes early, only to find that the men he had treated
with the new potion are healing much better than those who had been
cauterised.
1575, France: Pare publishes his ‘Works on Surgery’ which
introduces the idea of using ligatures following an amputation.
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| The Industrial Revolution |
1870, France: The French army suffers 23400 casualties from smallpox
during the Franco-Prussian war. The german army on the other hand,
had introduced vaccination and suffered only 297 cases of smallpox.
1880, France. Louis Pasteur and his team accidentally use old material
and inadvertently discover a vaccine for Chicken Cholera.
The Crimean War: The work of Florence Nightingale in military hospitals
in the Crimea highlights the need to have clean and orderly wards.
The Boer War: 40% of volunteers for the army from some towns are found
to be unfit to serve.
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| The Modern World |
The First World War leads to the rapid development of Plastic Surgery;
use of X-Rays becomes commonplace; new techniques for operating on
many parts of the body are developed and Blood Banks are established
to enable blood transfusions to be carried out at the front. |
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