The Second World War is recognized as one of the most destructive and innovative wars in history. Many of the pharmaceutical drugs and methods that are utilized today were discovered through trial and error in World War II. The new ingenious, destructive weapons that were developed during this war made the evolution of the medical field imperative in order to keep soldiers alive. Due to new medical advancements made during World War 2, such as new treatments, convalescent surgeries, developing medicines, and other inventions the survival rate of soldiers increased greatly. New techniques and invasive surgeries, compared to the obsolescent methods and treatments, have had a major impact on the likeliness of survival amongst soldiers. Plasma …show more content…
Airmen were extremely vulnerable to burns and also new inventions as Napalm and the Flame Thrower caused many of the soldiers to burn alive and the few who did survive had high chances of dying from infection due to open wound covering their bodies. Therefore, surgeon, Archibald McIndoe, further refined and establish the use of skin grafts. McIndoe would take an area of healthy skin, usually harvested from the legs, arms, back, and abdomen and transplant it onto the injured site (G). Another great step in the medical field was surgery. 90 percent of the wounds in World War II required surgery and 90 percent of all surgical procedures were orthopedic. Orthopedists had to revisit and relearn the concept of not immediately closing wounds (B). Rather than immediate closure of wounds, doctors would wait and examine the overall status of the wound and if it was draining properly and had a good amount of healthy tissue, they would then close it (E). The methods used for heart surgery also improved and changed. In many cases, soldiers would suffer from fragments, debris, and bullets getting caught in their heart, so Dr. Harken, a United States Army surgeon, wanted to find a way for an object to be removed from the …show more content…
With the start of World War II, chemical warfare was introduced. There were drugs and medications that could be used for wounds after a chemical attack, however, what finding a way to prevent the side effects from chemicals was the main concern. Americans established a material known as whetlerite that can act as a filter and absorb most poisonous chemicals. There were also masks made exclusively for those who suffered from a head trauma and needed a mask for protection. An average gas mask could not be placed over the bandages and gauze, so a head-wound gas mask was adapted for those being evacuated out of battle zones (G). The medical facilities also improved greatly because soldiers needed more advanced treatment centers since the casualties from weapons were becoming more extensive. Aid stations were placed around 300 to 500 yards behind the combat zones which made them much more accessible than hospitals located in safe areas out of enemy fire meaning that there was more distance between the injured and the help. When soldiers were injured they were transported to an aid stations by littler bearers, nicknamed the “backbone” because they would run into artillery fire to rescue the wounded. Clearing Stations were used for
Resection was a process that “involved cutting open the limb, sawing out the damaged bone, and then closing the incision” (Jones, 1). Resection allows the patient to keep his limbs but it requires a great ordeal of time and skill. This also contributed to the common practice of amputation during the war. But there were cases where surgeons did use this method. Terry J. Jones said in his NY Times article, “resections were used more frequently after surgeons learned that amputations had a much higher mortality rate” (Jones, 1). In another article by Corydon Ireland, it describes Mitchell Adam’s, a Harvard lecturer, grandfather who served as a volunteer surgeon during the Civil War. In the article, “Adams was not a champion of hasty amputations, but argued for excision and other limb-saving measures. And he describes the everyday pressures of a country practice in Framingham, Mass” (Ireland, 1). This meant that not all surgeons at the time only wanted to amputate but strived for alternate methods. This new knowledge shows that some surgeons were more dedicated to thinking about the well-being of their patients than others and this opens up to other possibilities that may have occurred during the war. This allows an image to come to mind of a surgeon diligently operating on a soldier with care and compassion. However, even though there may be many possibilities, we can’t truly know every event that occurs during a
From July 1851 to March 1852, Dr. Wythe practiced medicine in Philadelphia, where upon he moved to Port Carbon, Pennsylvania, and practiced until 1857. He next became surgeon in the collieries of Carbon County, a post he held until 1860.23 Dr. Wythe was practicing in Mauch Chunk, Pennsylvania during the succeeding two years, when the Civil War began and he received his commission from Abraham Lincoln to assume the position of Assistant Surgeon of the United States Volunteers. In July 1862, he was promoted to Surgeon and five months later organized the Camp Parole Hospital near Alexandria, D. C., for sick and wounded paroled soldiers. On February 28, 1863, Dr. Joseph Henry Wythe was promoted to the full rank of surgeon. After the Civil War, Wythe moved to the Pacifi...
Medicine has developed so dramatically over the last century that it is difficult to imagine a world in which its many benefits did not exist. Even as humans manage to eradicate some diseases, a look at history reminds us that there was a time when these and other diseases were rampant, and good health was the exception rather than the norm. There are many comparable time periods that medicine was needed and was used. With each, there were drastic changes to medical procedures and medical rules. Of the many different time periods that medicine was used; the comparison of medical care during the American Civil War and medical care during World War I is the most interesting. How did Civil War battlefield medicine compare with World War I battlefield medicine? That's a question that cannot be simply answered, but can be broken down into the overall sanitation of individuals, medical techniques, and overall medical staff for armies.
Most qualified surgeons started off as litter bearer and would carry men off the battlefield. If any of them showed interest in the medical field, they could become a Steward. A Steward's job was to take care of patients with minor wounds such as, scratches, and bumps. The other duties of a Steward were to pull teeth and take care of medicines for the surgeons. The Steward would also guard the medicinal stores, because often soldiers would try to break into the medicinal stores where the morphine, opium, and whisky were stored. If a Steward completed these duties, then he might be allowed to assist a surgeon in an operation, which could lead to becoming an assistant surgeon. He could then later on become an experienced and qualified surgeon.
One of the major diseases that almost permanently affected the soldiers was Shell Shock which was due to constant exposure to horrific scenes of death. Source A1 is an extract from a historian writing for the First World war aimed at students, focuses on ...
New advances in technology changed warfare in WW2. The change in technology since WW1 has produced such things as Atom Bomb, and new and improved sea and air warfare. New techniques had to be used because of technology, techniques such as 'mouseholing'. More people were killed because of technology, as more people died in WW2 than WW1.The technological advances in WW2 changed the battlefield completely as more deadly auxiliary was introduced.
In World War I and in the Vietnam War, the soldiers used tools such as guns, medications to keep them calm, first aid kits, melee combat weapons, rations of food, a form of communicating such as walkie talkies, or morse code. Due to the different kinds of terrain that soldiers would be in, different tools would be needed to assist in their survival. In rocky terrain, for example, they might wear heavier and more durable boots to keep being able to trek through the terrain. “When a mission took them to the mountains, they carried mosquito netting, machetes, canvas tarps, and extra bug juice.” In World War I, the soldiers from America traveled over seas to places like Europe, the Middle East, and Asia so that they could go fight in the war. Due to the soldiers having to travel, they needed to take medications in order to not contract diseases from those foreign
Here at the Chelsea Naval Hospital, the influx of patients arriving home from the war inflicted with "battle wounds and mustard gas burns," has created a shortage of physicians and it is becoming increasingly difficult to fight this influenza. Even our own physicians are falling ill from the disease and dying within hours of its onset. Today I received a letter from Dr. Roy, a friend and fellow physician at Camp Devens, who describes a similar situation:
Unsanitary hospitals and camps kept the wounded soldiers in large groups, which were ideal places for infection, fevers and disease to spread. Soldiers were not immune to childhood diseases like the measles and smallpox. Medical science has not yet discovered the importance of antiseptics in preventing infection. Water was contaminated and soldiers sometimes ate unripened or spoiled food. There weren’t always clean rags available to clean wounds.
During, and after World War I, there were lots of things that changed and advanced, some of the main, big changes and advances after World War I, was in the field of phycology and medicine. There were many different advances in the field of medicine after World War I, some of the main, medical advances, were in the field of surgery, development of new drugs, and in the field mental health and phycology.
It was during this time that doctors and nurses, through experience also demonstrated that blood could be stored and then safely transferred from patient to patient saving countless soldiers’ lives.
In September 1917, the Germans introduced the mustard gas or Yperite which was contained in artillery shells against the Russians at Riga. Those exposed to mustard gas experienced painful blisters internally and externally and blindness.... ... middle of paper ... ... Technology in World War I laid a foundation for even more powerful and deadly weapons, such as the nuclear bomb.
Eventually, the government will fund more and more diseases for those who served in the war and were exposed to the substances.
The EMS system goes back to the Crusades in the 11th century. The Knights of St. John were instructed by Arab and Greek doctors for first-aid treatment. The Knights were the first medical responders of that time, treating both sides of the war. The injured were taken to tents to be treated further. In 1792, the chief physician in Napoleons Army, Baron Dominique-Jean Larrey, designed and created the “flying ambulance”, which was a special type of carriage staffed with a group of medical personnel made to access every part of the battlefield. Then, in 1797, he also instituted the first pre-hospital system designed to triage and transport the wounded in the field to proper aid stations. Larrey’s actions and groundbreaking ideas helped increase the chances for survival among wounded soldiers and ultimately benefitted Napoleon’s conquest efforts.
Through studies, scientists have discovered that age is a factor in the healing process. The skin renews itself every few weeks over your lifetime, but once it is injured, the skin is forever damaged, “Skin has an almost unmatched capacity to heal wounds in a restorative mode. Still the end result falls short of the original skin, and with larger and full thickness wounds, dysfunctional and disfiguring scars can result” (Yates). Because injures happen anywhere and can happen through many ways, the implementation of a cheap and universal agent would be beneficial to society. This would be especially important to have in the medical kits of soldiers and hospitals around the world. Many soldiers get injured in combat, through bullet wounds, shrapnel, and explosions, and the agent made could potentially which can lighten the injury, keep the injury from worsening, and lessen the post status of the injury. In emergency rooms, it would allow doctors to keep the patient alive if something goes wrong during the procedure and help the healing process post operation. Having this healing agent will lower the amount of accident deaths and help prevent bleed outs that may occur. Some research into Wharton’s Jelly, stem cells from an umbilical cord, have provided valuable research in accelerating the process of cell regeneration, “Mesenchymal stem cells isolated from Wharton’s jelly of human umbilical cords (hWMSCs) have been proposed as an alternative source of progenitor cells for use in regenerative medicine [17,41–44]” (Aguilera). The value of research such as Wharton’s Jelly can provide aid to all those who are injured, this will provide faster healing in areas wounded. As of now, healing for humans is slower the older you get, somatic or adult stem cells are less