Vietnam War & Health and Medicine (I). ‘The surgeon's proper school'. Hippocrates, God of Medicine, was quoted as saying that ‘war is the only proper school for a surgeon'. Certainly, medical services have been associated with the military since the days of Ancient Greece. This relationship declined in the Middle Ages, but after a radical re-organisation of medicine during the 1700s, the links between the two grew stronger with each passing year. There is much debate about how much influence war and medicine have had on each other. In some cases, war moves medical practices and innovation forward, or refocuses research into specific conditions. Both orderlies and nurses were specialised roles that emerged and developed later than surgeons and physicians. Numbers of other specialists, including physiotherapists and administrators, who managed the casualties, also grew during the 1900s. War causes distress, displacement and death. Between 1955 and 2002, more than 5.4 million people died in wars in 13 countries; 72 million people died in the World War II (1939-1945) and almost 40 million in the World War I (1914-1918). The vast degree of human suffering caused by warfare has prompted medical innovation, with the sheer numbers of severely injured people pushing developments in medicine in order to reduce human suffering. But the effects and damage of war are long lasting, both physically and emotionally. And some of the damage is permanent. Until the 1900s, wars impacted on soldiers more than the civilian population. It was also true that more soldiers died of disease than from wounds received in battle. Roman surgeons prevented severe outbreaks of disease by locating military camps away from dangerous swamps. However, disease still caused a number of casualties. Roman surgeons were skilled in the art of tourniquets to stop bleeding and amputation to prevent the spread of gangrene. By the 1500s and 1600s, guns and cannons replaced swords and spears, presenting army surgeons with new types of wounds. Innovative methods of treatment were tried in the field by French surgeons such as Ambroise Paré. Yet despite the new weapons, soldiers continued to die mainly from disease rather than their wounds throughout the 1700s.
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