Some Medical Memories of Two World Wars

Abstract

MR. HAsLAM, in whose memory this oration is given, was a man of most lovable character, one of those of whom it can truly be said that he had not an enemy inthe world, and his famiiiar nickname of Uncle signifies the universal affection which he inspired. Trained at St. Thomas' Hospital in London, he was appointed Assistant Surgeon to the Birmingham General Hospital in 1882 and remained on the staff till the end of the First World War, when he retired;' but not to a life of leisure, for he became Dean of the Medical Faculty and remained so for ten years. Your invitation to deliver this oration recalled old memories of his teaching, and I reflected that his career in some ways resembled my own for I; too, after practising for many years as a surgeon-of sortsfinished up as an administrator in this university. But we had another experience in common: we both served in the Royal Army Medical Corps of the Territorial Army throughout the First World War. In my own case I remained on the active list of that army till 1949 and I have, therefore, chosen as my theme a comparison of the British medical services in the two world wars in each of which I served for four years overseas. It is commonly believed that the more lethal character of modem weapons has led to a great increase in the numbers killed in modem battles. But this belief is not borne out by the facts. Livy records that 50,000 Romans were killed at the battle of Cannre (216 B.C.), all in hand-to-hand fighting in a single day. I had occasion not long ago to investigate the battle of Edgehill, the first of the Civil War, fought in Warwickshire on a Sunday afternoon late in October, 1643. The battle was not joined till three o'clock with a bare two hours of daylight left, the forces' actually engaged probably numbered well linder 20,000 men; no artillery was used, and all th.e fighting was at close quarters. Next day over 1,000 dead were buried on the battlefield, and there is no record of those who died as the result of the wounds they received. No battle in the last war records such a high percentage of killed in so short a time. What has occurred since then is a great reduction in the numbers of deaths suffered by armies from sickness and this is directly due to. advances in medical science. There are no reliable figures to illustrate this earlier than the Crimean War, in which the British losses from disease outnumbered those from enemy bullets by 10 to 1. The actual figures were 16,300 to 1,750, dysentery, typhus, typhoid and cholera being the chief killers. In the Sino-Japanese war of 1894,