Table of Contents

Illustrations Acknowledgements 1. Introduction: War is Good for Medicine 2. From the Trench to the Hospital 3. Iconic Wounds: Gas, Shell Shock, Facial Injury 4. Ordinary Soldiers and Ordinary Pain 5. ‘We Did Not Fight’: Medical Pacifism and War 6. Lessons and Legacies: ‘Blood Swept Lands and Seas of Red’ Notes Bibliography Index

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Explores the history of medical services, health and welfare in Europe during the First World War.

About the Author

Fiona Reid is Head of Arts and Humanities at Newman University, Birmingham, where she teaches modern European History. She is the author of Broken Men: Shell Shock, Treatment and Recovery in Britain, 1914-1930 and a co-author (with Sharif Gemie and Laure Humbert) of Outcast Europe: Refugees and Relief Workers in an Era of Total War, 1936-1948 (2011).

Reviews

[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*

An excellent and thought-provoking addition to the historiography of medicine during the First World War ... It is a must read for any scholar of either subject.
*Annals of Science*

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

A welcome contribution to the historiography of medicine in the First World War ... Reid convincingly demonstrates that the relationship between medicine, war and soldiers had many layers.
*European History Quarterly*

Resulting from my deep interest in the relationship between war and medicine, especially the First World War, I have read quite a number of books on the subject. Fiona Reid’s Medicine in First World War Europe definitely ranks among the best, also because of the attention to the far too often neglected, but highly interesting and important phenomenon of medical pacifism.
*Leo van Bergen, Dutch Veterans Institute/Netherlands Institute for Military History, The Netherlands*

Medicine in First World War Europe is an important addition to the growing literature on First World War medical services. Fiona Reid introduces the key questions and ideas relating to this vital area of First World War studies, supporting her narrative and analysis with thoughtfully selected further reading lists. This is a must read for undergraduates or postgraduates studying the history of medicine in modern Europe or the social and cultural history of the First World War.
*Jessica Meyer, University Academic Fellow in Legacies of War, University of Leeds, UK*

Fiona Reid's wonderful work uncovers the fascinating and often hidden histories of the medical experience during the First World War. By focusing on personal experiences in Britain, Germany and France, she shows us that whilst the exigencies of industrial warfare were paramount, medicine in wartime was shaped and negotiated by both the individual and the personal, by both the carer and the patient. Reid shows us that the results were messy and complex, but always compelling
*Wendy Gagen, Independent Scholar, UK*