Navigating the Heartache WWI Brings
The need to threat burns in the late 19th and early 20th centuries was great. Women’s skirts would catch fire while cooking, or children’s clothing while playing too close to the fireplace or stove. An overturned kerosene or gas lamp would set a home or barn ablaze in minutes. During World War I, men also…
During World War I, 19 million men were wounded, and an estimated 500,000 amputations were performed. As frightening as these numbers are, men who lived long enough to receive medical attention had a relatively high survival rate. This success was due in part to modern innovations such as antiseptics. Other medical tools included: Anesthesia Since…
If war does have a silver lining, it’s the medical advances which come as a result. One of these advances is the blood transfusion. Blood transfusion was nothing new in 1914. Doctors had experimented with it since the 1600s. These early transfusions were from person to person, and sometimes didn’t work. Doctors weren’t sure why…
The Canadian Army Nursing Corps was part of the Canadian Army Medical Corps (CAMC). It was founded in 1904 and its members served during World War I in France, Belgium and around the Mediterranean. By the time Armistice was declared in 1918, 21,453 nurses, physicians, dentists, ambulance drivers, stretcher bearers and orderlies had served. Of…
My novel, Angel of Mercy, focuses on Hettie, a young woman serving during the First World War with the Canadian Army Nursing Service. While her experiences are fictional, she and her colleagues are based on the brave nurses who served overseas during nearly five years of war. “In his much-admired book published in 1975,” Baroness…
Post-traumatic stress syndrome (PTSD) was not a diagnosis during World War I, and psychiatry was a relatively new medical discipline. No one knew how intensely stress affects the mind. Not long after the war began, a new disease — first coined shell shock in 1915 but not in common use until later — began showing…
In the movies, every man who volunteers for the army is accepted — usually because a character is destined for either glory or a senseless death. During World War I, there was no shortage of eager men willing to fight. These men needed to pass the military’s various requirements for service. Men joined the military…
Edith Cavell was a heroine even before her name became internationally known. She became a nurse in 1900 and devoted her life to saving the lives of others. Born Dec. 4, 1865, in Swardeston, United Kingdom, Cavell was the daughter of an Anglican minister. She moved to Belgium in 1907 where she served as matron of…
It is said that every gray cloud has a silver lining. If the ugly behemoth that was the First World War has a silver lining, it’s the medical advances that came as a result. World War I, at the time, was the most brutal war in human history as well as the most technological. The…