Ana Carden-Coyne.The Politics of Wounds: Military Patients and Medical Power in the First World War.

Abstract

Considering the chaos of World War I, it is easy to dismiss casualties as statistics or to ignore the wounded once they have left the battle. Ana Carden-Coyne, though, starts her examination at the moment of wounding. Carden-Coyne rightly points out in her rich and thoughtful book that wounds and the British soldiers who suffered them were integral parts of World War I as well as of the society and culture in which they existed. She shows that military medicine does not belong just to the military, to the doctors, or even to the patients. The roles the wounded played and the significance of the pain they suffered in World War I are complex; these men were subjects and actors, interacting with others that include the military, the medical world, the public, the political system, and even the empire. The wounded cannot, of course, be viewed as a monolithic group, but Carden-Coyne’s careful examination of a wealth of primary and secondary sources enables her to draw some general conclusions, particularly about the negotiations for power among the individuals in the groups she discusses. For example, some men with heroic, visible wounds, ones that put them in the role of seemingly vulnerable patients, took advantage of the attention those injuries inspired, especially from women, to benefit from outings, meals, and other activities outside of the hospital, its rules, and its routine. Conflicts appeared not only among individuals and authorities, but also between groups, such as the military and civilians, humanitarians and militarists, the army and the medical world. This adds to the complexities of the story Carden-Coyne tells, and it explains her political emphasis in what is nominally a medical subject.