Between Flesh and Steel

Between Flesh and Steel
Author: Richard A. Gabriel
Publisher: Potomac Books, Inc.
Total Pages: 493
Release: 2013
Genre: History
ISBN: 1612344216

Over the last five centuries, the development of modern weapons and warfare has created an entirely new set of challenges for practitioners in the field of military medicine. Between Flesh and Steel traces the historical development of military medicine from the Middle Ages to modern times. Military historian Richard A. Gabriel focuses on three key elements: the modifications in warfare and weapons whose increased killing power radically changed the medical challenges that battle surgeons faced in dealing with casualties, advancements in medical techniques that increased the effectiveness of military medical care, and changes that finally brought about the establishment of military medical care system in modern times. Others topics include the rise of the military surgeon, the invention of anesthesia, and the emergence of such critical disciplines as military psychiatry and bacteriology. The approach is chronological--century by century and war by war, including Iraq and Afghanistan--and cross-cultural in that it examines developments in all of the major armies of the West: British, French, Russian, German, and American. Between Flesh and Steel is the most comprehensive book on the market about the evolution of modern military medicine.

Public Health and the US Military

Public Health and the US Military
Author: Bobby A. Wintermute
Publisher: Routledge
Total Pages: 647
Release: 2010-10-18
Genre: History
ISBN: 1136892672

Public Health and the US Military is a cultural history of the US Army Medical Department focusing on its accomplishments and organization coincident with the creation of modern public health in the Progressive Era. A period of tremendous social change, this time bore witness to the creation of an ideology of public health that influences public policy even today. The US Army Medical Department exerted tremendous influence on the methods adopted by the nation’s leading civilian public health figures and agencies at the turn of the twentieth century. Public Health and the US Military also examines the challenges faced by military physicians struggling to win recognition and legitimacy as expert peers by other Army officers and within the civilian sphere. Following the experience of typhoid fever outbreaks in the volunteer camps during the Spanish-American War, and the success of uniformed researchers and sanitarians in confronting yellow fever and hookworm disease in Cuba and Puerto Rico, the Medical Department’s influence and reputation grew in the decades before the First World War. Under the direction of sanitary-minded medical officers, the Army Medical Department instituted critical public health reforms at home and abroad, and developed a model of sanitary tactics for wartime mobilization that would face its most critical test in 1917. The first large conceptual overview of the role of the US Army Medical Department in American society during the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, this book details the culture and quest for legitimacy of an institution dedicated to promoting public health and scientific medicine.

Man and Wound in the Ancient World

Man and Wound in the Ancient World
Author: Richard A. Gabriel
Publisher: Potomac Books, Inc.
Total Pages: 277
Release: 2012
Genre: History
ISBN: 1597978485

Examines the fascinating role of medicine in ancient military cultures; Shows how the ancients understood the body, patched up their warriors, and sent them back into battle; Reveals medical secrets lost during the Dark Ages; Explores how ancient civilizations' technologies have influenced modern medical practices

Civil War Medicine

Civil War Medicine
Author: Shauna Devine
Publisher: Indiana University Press
Total Pages: 356
Release: 2019-05-01
Genre: Medical
ISBN: 0253040108

“An incredible resource for anyone interested in the human experience of the Civil War―as recorded by a medical professional tasked with saving lives.”—David Price, Executive Director of the National Museum of Civil War Medicine In this never before published diary, twenty-nine-year-old surgeon James Fulton transports readers into the harsh and deadly conditions of the Civil War as he struggles to save the lives of the patients under his care. Fulton joined a Union army volunteer regiment in 1862, only a year into the Civil War, and immediately began chronicling his experiences in a pocket diary. Despite his capture by the Confederate Army at Gettysburg and the confiscation of his medical tools, Fulton was able to keep his diary with him at all times. He provides a detailed account of the next two years, including his experiences treating the wounded and diseased during some of the most critical campaigns of the war, and his relationships with soldiers, their commanders, civilians, other health-care workers, and the opposing Confederate army. The diary also includes his notes on recipes for medical ailments from sore throats to syphilis. In addition to Fulton’s diary, editor Robert D. Hicks and experts in Civil War medicine provide context and additional information on the practice and development of medicine during the Civil War, including the technology and methods available at the time; the organization of military medicine; doctor-patient interactions; and the role of women as caregivers and relief workers. Civil War Medicine: A Surgeon’s Diary provides a compelling new account of the lives of soldiers during the Civil War and a doctor’s experience of one of the worst health crises ever faced by the United States.

Learning from the Wounded

Learning from the Wounded
Author: Shauna Devine
Publisher: UNC Press Books
Total Pages: 386
Release: 2014
Genre: History
ISBN: 1469611554

Learning from the Wounded: The Civil War and the Rise of American Medical Science

An Equal Burden

An Equal Burden
Author: Jessica Meyer
Publisher: Oxford University Press
Total Pages: 239
Release: 2019-02-13
Genre: History
ISBN: 0192557416

An Equal Burden is the first scholarly study of the Army Medical Services in the First World War to focus on the roles and experiences of the men of the Royal Army Medical Corps (RAMC). Though they were not professional medical caregivers, they were called upon to provide urgent medical care and, as non-combatants, were forbidden from carrying weapons. Their role in the war effort was quite unique and warranting of further study. Structured both chronologically and thematically, An Equal Burden examines the work that RAMC rankers undertook and its importance to the running of the chain of medical evacuation. It additionally explores the gendered status of these men within the medical, military, and cultural hierarchies of a society engaged in total war. Through close readings of official documents, personal papers, and cultural representations, Meyer argues that the ranks of the RAMC formed a space in which non-commissioned servicemen, through their many roles, defined and redefined medical caregiving as men's work in wartime.