Essay About Review Of Medicine And Decent Medical Care

Review of Medicine and Victory by Mark Harrison
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Harrison, Mark. Medicine and Victory: British Military Medicine in the
Second War. Oxford: Oxford UP. 2004. Pp. xii, 283.
Allied victory during the Second World War owed much to the advancement
of medicine. Mark Harrison argues that the importance of British military
medicine has largely been ignored in scholarly works. He says, “the
invisibility of medicine in the historical record belies its true
significance and masks some of the Armys greatest achievements.” (1) Due to
the enormous losses incurred during World War One, a new doctrine emerged.
This doctrine aimed to “substitute technology for manpower”. (3) Medical
provisions aimed to maximize scarce human and material resources. An
emphasis on the individual in public health or decentralization of hygienic
management emerged. Propaganda made it clear that the citizen solider had
certain rights and responsibilities, the right to decent medical care and the
responsibility to keep fighting fit. Harrison states that in British
society, health care was seen as a kind of social wage, it could be earned by
military service.
Socialized medical ideologies sought to relate the individual to
society. Proponents of socialized medicine attempted to bridge the gap
between medical specialties and to treat the patient as a whole.
Advancements such as the Blood Transfusion Service (BTS) allowed citizens to
contribute to the war effort. Harrison argues that the BTS is significant
because the British were the first to have such a unit. This was a major
success on their part and for medicine as a whole. Advancements in the field
of Psychiatry sought to cater to the solider as a whole, his physical well-
being and his mental well-being. Harrison states that the war did much to
advance the medical profession and to promote educational initiatives aimed
at highlighting the importance of individual and societal health and hygiene.
Disease generally spreads from one person to another, therefore it is
important to educate the masses on how to protect themselves. The opinion of
many proponents was that a healthy society is more productive, a healthy army
is more successful. Many hoped that basic hygiene and medical knowledge would
carry over into soldiers civilian lives, thus creating a more health
conscious society. Harrison argues that medicine was a key component in
Allied success and that the war was crucial in the advancement of the medical
profession. He asserts that the British were the most medically prepared due
largely to the failures they had experienced during World War One.
Harrison organizes the book thematically. First he surveys the state
of military medicine leading up to the war and explores the medical
inadequacies in previous battles in order to show how the British government,
the British Medical Society, and the Army Medical Services worked together to
cure the defects they had experienced in the past. Next he analyzes medicine
in retreat. He shows how medical units dealt with evacuation and how they
moved vast supplies, patients, and staff in the face of defeat and retreat.
The advancement of mobile medical units, the creation of movable hospitals,
and the how the medical units operated on the front lines and in places like
POW camps is also discussed. Harrison states that the professionalism shown
by soldiers and medical staff in times of strain and uncertainty was
extraordinary. Medicine and Victory analyzes why the medical profession was
portrayed as lowly in the military thus making it difficult to recruit new
officers into medical units.