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

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.

“[An] excellent history that will interest scholars of the First World War, the history of medicine, and modern European history more generally … [Reid’s] encyclopedic survey of the relevant history and scholarship on these topics is deeply impressive … [She] has rendered exceptionally well the sort of service historians owe both to their readers and to the people who make and live the history we read.” – EuropeNow

“[The] controversies over war and masculinity that surrounded pacifists who volunteered as stretcher-bearers at the front should put it on undergraduate reading lists.” – CHOICE

“Fiona Reid's anecdotal approach to her topic has yielded an engaging study … it definitely merits careful reading and reflection.” – Michigan War Studies Review