Lyn MacDonald produced an exceptional accout of medicine as practiced in the wilderness and swamps of France and Flanders during World war I. She has incorporated the experiences of all elements of the medical field, from surgeons to nurses of long experience to surgeons fresh from medical school and nurses fresh from the recent social round. In all it is a phenominal effort. She has included not just British accounts but also the stories of Canadians and Americans (before and after the official entry of the country into the war in 1917). The reader finds surgeons performing complicated surgery by lamp and candle light and later digging graves for patients who did not survive their wounds. We read of the effects of early chemical attacks in 1915 and the effects on the men who received the bombardment for the first time.
What I found of interest was the tin mask shop. If you go back to Chariots of Fire, in one of the opening scenes, you see two war veterans and as I recall one of them was wearing a representation of one of the masks devloped in World War I.
Some of the medical developements from World War I continued at least into the 1980s. Dakin's Solution was developed to treat wound infectinos. I was working in a VA hospital in the mid 1980s and we were using the same solution for treating open ulcers on patinet's legs. I remember one man, a World War I pilot receiving treatment with Dakin's - developed during his time in the military and now being used to treat his leg 70 years later. Ironic that a WWI vet would receive treatment developed in WWI but also a testamony of it's effectiveness. Great stuff!
The stories from the nurses are what I found to be most interesting. These women, and a few men, were with the patients around the clock and got to know them. The stories they tell are at times amusing (patients teasing a new nurse) and then sad (a young soldier putting his thermometer in a hot water bottle to avoid a return to the front lines) and how the nurses handled these situations and more.
In all, I think this is a must read - if nothing else as a balance to the stories of the battles of World War I and the statistics of how many killed, wounded and missing. This book makes real people out of the numbers.
I highly recommend this book!
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Top reviews from other countries
C. Rees
Wonderful first hand accounts
Reviewed in the United Kingdom on November 9, 2023
Yomiryam -- Practising Catholic, Proud Jew
Very good!
Reviewed in Canada on January 18, 2020Lindsay Gowlett
Everyone should read this book!
Reviewed in the United Kingdom on May 19, 2014