History of the Great War, based on Official Documents Medical Services: Diseases of the War

Abstract

UP to the beginning of the nineteenth century the medical history of wars was very incomplete, and is to be found in memoirs or commentaries written by individual military surgeons. To this category belong the works of Percy, M'Grigor, and particularly Barron Larrey, the great military surgeon of the Napoleonic period. A great change, however, took place with the publication by the Americans of the splendid and exhaustive “Medical and Surgical History of the War of Rebellion (1861–1865),” which has remained a model for all later works on military medicine. After the greatest of all wars it was to be expected that the medical histories which were bound to make their appearance would be voluminous and detailed, and that this country would not be behind others in this respect. The volume before us does not lead one to anticipate a standard work of permanent value in medical literature. From the brief preface, occupying a page and a half, it is not clear what the object of the work is. It is stated that the contributors had at their disposal the material contained in official documents, while later on it is said that “there has been little opportunity for further analysis and study of accumulated records of medical cases,” and an apology is made that the contributors have been handicapped by the fact that papers published during the war were comparatively few. To any one conversant with the volume of medical literature which poured out in every country, this must seem an extraordinary statement. The “Index Medicus War Supplement,” dealing with 1914–17, occupies alone 260 pages of titles, which at a conservative estimate represents at least 10,000 papers which were published on some aspect of military medicine during these three years.

History of the Great War, based on Official Documents. Medical Services: Diseases of the War.

Vol. I. Edited by Major-General Sir W. G. MacPherson Sir W. P. Herringham Col. T. R. Elliott Lt.-Col. A. Balfour. Pp. viii + 550. (London: H.M.S.O., 1922.) 21s. net.