Justice to the Maimed Soldier: Nursing, Medial Care and Welfare for Sick and Wounded Soldiers and their Families during the English Civil Wars and Interregnum, 1642–1660, The History of Medicine in Context Series (Aldershot, UK: Ashgate, 2001). ISBN: 0-7546-0476-4 (HB). 4 B&W illustrations, 15 Tables, and 8 maps, xv + 283pp.

Abstract

Health & History ● 14/1 ● 2012 213 with the successful introduction of the administration of antiRhesus D gamma globulin to pregnant women, so that now the incidence of haemolytic disease of the newborn is extremely low. Pfennigwerth has provided us with a suitable tribute to the work of Sam Stening in stirring the inertia of the medical world to believe in the advances and to take them on board. As often happens with specialised works of this nature, ‘In Good Hands’ did not interest the publishing world sufficiently for a front-line company to take it on. That Ian Pfennigwerth was able to get the book into print by his own efforts is worthy of much praise. Unfortunately, this has left him without the help of the editorial effort that a big publishing house could have afforded. Alongside some moments of repetitive prose there is the occasional error of spelling (p. 268, ‘Kate Willing’ instead of ‘Kate Winning’) and of scientific fact (p. 246, ‘other viruses, too, such as diphtheria’). These things aside, this is a story that will give readers a lasting insight into the privations and the grinding repetitiveness of POW life and the struggles the medical staff had in trying to surmount the insurmountable. IAN STEWART WAGGA WAGGA, NSW Eric Gruber von Arni, Justice to the Maimed Soldier: Nursing, Medial Care and Welfare for Sick and Wounded Soldiers and their Families during the English Civil Wars and Interregnum, 1642–1660, The History of Medicine in Context Series (Aldershot, UK: Ashgate, 2001). ISBN: 0-7546-0476-4 (HB). 4 B&W illustrations, 15 Tables, and 8 maps, xv + 283pp. Research into the medical care of the sick and wounded in British military units is rarely given credence prior to the midnineteenth -century Nightingale reforms. Before this, it was regularly assumed that military medical care was haphazard, poorly organised, and largely ineffective. Eric Gruber vonArni’s book, Justice to the Maimed Soldier, redresses this historical imbalance and uncovers a radically different state of affairs. 214 BOOK REVIEWS The title of the book comes from the inscription that surrounds the seal of the Committee for Sick and Maimed Soldiers and indicates the book’s focus on the Civil Wars and Interregnum. Due to the wealth of primary source material available, von Arni is able to provide the reader with an extensive outline of the development of government organised medical care in the Civil War armies during the mid–seventeenth century (p. xiv). Essentially this book addresses two issues: medical and nursing care in the English armies at this time; and far more importantly, the undervalued issue of nursing care before Florence Nightingale. The failure of previous historians to address this means von Arni has charted new territory. He cites only three previous studies that made any references to casualties, hospitals, or nurses. Most secondary sources for the period focus on the broader area of medical history or civil war history. Yet von Arni shows there was extensive primary source material to draw upon. Some of this material, such as the Summary of the Accounts of the Committee for Sick and Maimed Soldiers and the Regulations for Patients and Nurses at the Savoy and Elsewhere, 15 November 1644, obtained from the Public Record Office are included in the appendix (pp. 223 and 235). These archives give a contemporary explanation of how Parliament intended their military hospitals and houses to be run, as well as how they should finance them. Von Arni also turns to national record offices and county offices as well, uncovering new information. The clever use of these understudied sources is proof of the fact that the primary sources have been available but largely ignored. There is a noted bias towards the Parliamentarians in the history that can potentially frustrate those interested in the Royalist concerns. This, however, is not the fault of the author, rather the result of a failure of Royalist source material to survive (p. 21). Added to this is the Parliamentarians’ access to the City of London’s finances, giving them a greater capacity to meet their medical requirements. Coupled with greater concern for the lot of the ‘commonweal,’ Parliament’s superior medical arrangements make sense (p. 212...