Doctors in the Great War by Ian R Whitehead. Leo Cooper, £25, pp 309. ISBN 0 85052 691 4. Rating: ★★★
Many books have been written about the first world war, but few have addressed medical experiences. Ian Whitehead, a lecturer in modern British history, wrote his PhD thesis on medical officers and the British army during the first world war, which forms the basis of this book. Well researched and documented, the text is complemented by 20 photographs reproduced from collections held at the Imperial War Museum. The book opens with a discussion of military medical services from the time of the Crimean war until the first world war (1854-1914), specifically the efforts by the British Medical Association to improve the status of medical officers. Turning to medical experiences during the first world war, Whitehead discusses tensions between military and civilian requirements, the training (or lack of) of medical officers for war services, medical administration on the western front, and the work of the medical officers along the lines of evacuation and their role in maintaining the health and morale of the troops. He also assesses the long term impact of doctors' wartime experiences on medicine and society.
Whitehead suggests, in an interesting argument, that the constraints which military discipline placed on doctors' professional freedom helped to reinforce their opposition to a state medical service.
He also writes that women's work, which showed that they were able to match that of male doctors in terms of quality and range, strongly advanced the case for equality in the medical profession. Yet he also points out that the interwar period witnessed similar experiences for women doctors to those that existed before 1914, showing that the discrimination had little to do with actual talent. Some of the problems that medical officers had to deal with—such as shell shock, sexually transmitted diseases, and the debates about anti-typhoid inoculation—provide further insights into wider social attitudes.
Whitehead is perhaps too ready to pass judgment—for example, claiming that, while there would always be strong vocal opposition to the use of prophylactics, “it was verging on the criminal for the War Office not to sanction their adoption when they could so easily have prevented the invaliding of a great deal of men.” Clearly the War Office had other priorities. Overall, the book provides some useful insights into the status and experiences of medical practitioners around the time of the first world war.