Health & History 11/1 2009 183 Anzacs with particular interest.To my mind, this is social history at itsbest. PATRICIAGRIMSHAW UNIVERSITY OF MELBOURNE Melissa Lamer, James Peto, and Nadine Monem, eds, War and Medicine (London: Black Dog Publishing, 2008). ISBN 978 1906155520.256 pp. Serving as a companion volume to theWellcome Trust's current exhibition of the same name, this book is something of a chimaera. Chronologically, it spans conflicts from the Crimean to the Iraq wars, but the coverage is patchy. Key episodes in the development of wartime disease prevention?such as the Spanish-American War of 1898 and the South African War of 1899-1902?are neglected, as is the Spanish Civil War, which saw the firstwidespread use of sulpha antibiotics and blood banks. Thematically, the focus is largely on thebattlefield and the rehabilitation ofwounded personnel. There is thus little mention of themedical consequences ofwar for civilian populations, from the 1918-19 influenza pandemic to anthrax scares within the current 'war on terror.' Indeed, the entire volume focuses exclusively on the treatment and care ofwartime casualties, largely ignoring the role of biom?dical research as an aid tomilitary efficiency via personnel selection, maintenance of nutrition, hygiene, and immunisation, or the refinement of weapons technologies such as chemical munitions, landmines, or battlefield lasers. Organisationally, too, War and Medicine alternates between essay collection and exhibition catalogue. It isa highly visual volume, reproducing numerous well-chosen images ranging fromECG traces to postcards, propaganda posters to surgical photographs. I was particularly takenbyHugh Small's reading?on page 35?of Florence Nightingale's graphs as a rhetorical form of 'visual poetry' within the Royal Commission report into Crimean War mortality. Likewise, a World War I photograph of wounded soldiers being evacuated on overhead railings resembling those found in butchers' shops (p. 69) aptly illustrated the theme ofAna Carden-Coyne's essay, 'Soldiers' bodies in thewar machine.' In fact, the pictures form the strongest element of this book and reward careful consideration, although it 184 BOOKREVIEWS is a shame thatmore images from the exhibition?particularly the post-World War I paintings by Otto Dix and George Grosz?are not included. The text sections intersperse essays with personal accounts from nurses, doctors, and combat veterans, including British, American, North Vietnamese, and Iraqi sources. These contributions are?perhaps deliberately?quite uneven, as are the essays. For instance, writing from a Gem?an perspective, Susanne Hahn resists the trend for victors to portray conflict as a stimulus formedical advances, outlining instead the devastating effects of World War I on medical training, staffing, and ethics. Wolfgang U. Eckart 's analysis of medical aspects of the Stalingrad siege offers a more conventional narrative, but has surprisingly little to say with regard to psychological casualties. Conversely, Ben Shephard?an expert on military psychiatry?contributes an extremely tendentious piece decrying the construction of posttraumatic stress disorder in thewake of theVietnam War. Apparently overlooking the enormous body of US psychiatric research that arose fromWorld War II, Shephard claims thatAmerican psychiatrists forgot the European lessons of thefirsthalf of the century, painting unflattering portraits thatborder on libel; for instance: 'Large numbers of people with no direction in life began retraining as ''trauma counsellors"" (p. 174). While the introductory overview by military medicine doyen Mark Harrison is uninspiring, Joanna Burke's essay enlisting medical experiences across both world wars forms an excellent prototype for adapting recent scholarly research for a wider audience. It is difficult toplace this volume with regard to readership. The text is obviously written for a broad audience with littlebackground knowledge of the history of military medicine. As such, War and Medicine offers little to challenge or surprise historians with an established interest in the field. However, while the occasional typographical or factual errors can be diverting, the images are well reproduced, providing a rich source of visual evidence. These numerous illustrations?coupled with the diversity of written contributions?suggest this book as a stimulating if incomplete primer for students new tomilitary and/ormedical history. PETER HOBBINS UNIVERSITY OF SYDNEY ...