Battlefield Medicine from Ancient Egypt to Modern Afghanistan

 

Medic! That cry on the battlefield means a soldier is wounded. It also means someone will almost always respond, a normally-unarmed battlefield medic. This is the known and expected outcome of that call. But where did battlefield medicine start and how did evolve?

“Battlefield Medics: How Warfare Changed the History of Medicine,” by Martin King, tells that story. He starts at the origins of battlefield medicine and traces its progress through the present. He also shows its impact on all modern medicine.

The story starts in Ancient Egypt. Pharaoh’s armies had an organized medical service. The treatments of the day were limited to first aid, herbal medicine, and a lot of prayer. Surgery was rarely attempted. Dissection lay in the future.

From there King carries the tale forward. The first half of the book examines battlefield medicine prior to the twentieth century. He shows the contributions the ancient Greeks and Romans made through Hippocrates and Galen (who advanced wound treatment). He presents the Middle Ages and the emergence of the barber-surgeon. (The same guy who cut your hair tended your wounds.)

He shows how battlefield trauma medicine began entering modern times when men like Ambroise Paré appeared, with scientific knowledge added by Andreas Velalius and William Harvey. From there he traces the appearance of the military hospital, and the inclusion of surgeons on the rolls of warships and military units.

Battlefield surgery arrived with Dominique-Jean Larrey in Napoleonic France, and evolved throughout the nineteenth century.  King discusses the influence of Florence Nightingale, Clara Barton (and the Sanitary Commission) and Henry Dunant (who founded the Red Cross).

King spends the remaining half of the book in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries. It is an appropriate split, because medical technology, including battlefield medical technology grew at an astonishing rate after 1900. Care soldiers of the First World War received was far superior to that experienced in the wars of the mid-1800s.

King documents how each successive twentieth-century war saw quantum improvements in battlefield medicine; sulfa drugs and penicillin in World War II, helicopter evacuation and MASH units in Korea, rapid transport to sophisticated stateside hospitals by Vietnam, and more into this century.

“Battlefield Medics” is a whirlwind trip through trauma medicine’s history.  King shows the symbiotic relationship between modern civilian trauma medicine and battlefield trauma treatment since World War II in this book. It will fascinate those interesting in medical and military history.

“Battlefield Medics: How Warfare Changed the History of Medicine,” by Martin King, Sirius, 2021, 256 pages, $12.99 (paperback) $6.99 (ebook) 

This review was written by Mark Lardas who writes at Ricochet as Seawriter. Mark Lardas, an engineer, freelance writer, historian, and model-maker, lives in League City, TX. His website is marklardas.com.

Published in History
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There are 6 comments.

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  1. DaveSchmidt Coolidge
    DaveSchmidt
    @DaveSchmidt

    I am adding this to my bibliography.  Thanks. 

    • #1
  2. Quietpi Member
    Quietpi
    @Quietpi

    Oh, I’m ordering this.  I spent the last five years of my military time as section sergeant to a battalion medical section.  

    Gone are the white armbands and pistols.  Medics carry long guns just like everybody else.  We’ve learned that a person who can be identified as a medic by the enemy contributes to his early demise.  They are favored targets, because taking out a unit’s medic dramatically reduces the chance of survival for anybody else who gets injured.  

    Gone also are the provisions of the Geneva Conventions designed to protect medical personnel.  But the only country that honors/honored the Conventions is the United States.  

    @seawriter, can you get some extra points or something if we mention you when we order?

    • #2
  3. Hartmann von Aue Member
    Hartmann von Aue
    @HartmannvonAue

    Thanks. This looks fascinating. 

    • #3
  4. Seawriter Contributor
    Seawriter
    @Seawriter

    Quietpi (View Comment):
    @seawriter, can you get some extra points or something if we mention you when we order?

    Not really. I’m in it for the free books.

    • #4
  5. Some Call Me ...Tim Coolidge
    Some Call Me ...Tim
    @SomeCallMeTim

    Looks like an interesting book that I will add to my list.  Thanks for the review.

    “King shows the symbiotic relationship between modern civilian trauma medicine and battlefield trauma treatment since World War II in this book.”

    The military used to send doctors to Charity Hospital in New Orleans to teach them trauma (especially gunshot) care in a real world environment.  The locals were, and are, shooting each other at an astonishing rate.

    Fun Fact:  The Navy teaches its dentists trauma care also.  When the terrorists blew up the Battalion Landing Team HQ in Beirut in 1983, they killed the medical doctors.  The only medically trained person left alive was the BLT dentist who had to handle the trauma care for the wounded.

    • #5
  6. She Member
    She
    @She

    Well, I’m sold.

    You see, I live on a farm, and not long after we moved out here, all the way back in 1986, we had a difficulty with one of our sheep.  The wonderful old veterinarian who came out to help reminded me of James Herriot (one of my childhood heroes), and had a plethora of stories.  He repaired the ram’s wound not with stitches, but with–superglue!!  And explained that many rough-and-ready remedies that had been enthusiastically adopted by veterinarians (before their “approved” versions were unleashed on human medicine) came from the battlefield.

    Another such innovation is that stretchy, sticks-to-itself, elastic bandage stuff that is so very useful when binding a wound and no other bandage will conform to the shape.  It’s used a lot to bandage horse’s legs.  But not around here.  It’s invaluable for all creatures, including me.  (Thank God for Tractor Supply.) We have much to thank our men (and women) in uniform for.  But not many realize the benefit of this sort of thing.

    • #6
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