Work rehabilitation in France during the Great War 1914–1918?

Abstract

The Great War brought the belle époque to a close with a barbarism that left an unprecedented number of dead and wounded. The armed forces health service progressively organized to better treat war injuries and to save the gueules cassées, those veterans who were disfigured in battle. A country that had been turned entirely towards the war paid homage to the crippled who had lost their bodily integrity on the field of honor. But overcrowding of hospitals, the scarcity of skilled labor, and an aimless generation in the care of the state inspired certain decision makers to revalorize the notion of therapeutic work. Historical documentary research methods and thematic analyses were used to analyze articles published by the Académie de Medicine, medical theses and books written by doctors of the time, all sourced through the Bibliothéque Nationale de France. From October 1914, therapy schools for wounded veterans, based principally in the craftwork and agricultural industries, were urgently created. Numerous publications discussing the methods and results of work therapy appeared. The French term réadaptation appeared from 1915, evoking the return of the invalid to civilian life. Objectives ranged from the provision of labor behind the front, to the research for a lever in the re-establishment of the “human motor”. Models of prostheses and assistive devices were published. Medical personnel emphasized the value of motivation and social links. Others proposed tools to measure the results of work therapy on personal capacities. Two hundred therapy schools were listed in 1918. Texts issuing from these experiences demonstrate a rupture in the conceptualization of care for the wounded before and after the Great War. Certain authors expressed a dynamic that could be qualified as bio-psycho-social. Manual labor was promoted not only as ameliorating bodily capacities and emotional states, but also in enabling subsequent social participation, through occupation in paid work. If rehabilitation through activity was viewed with a certain consensus in the medical literature, there remained a level of debate on the debut and duration of treatment, the usefulness of specific evaluation and the legal framework to be adopted.