As humankind has developed increasingly sophisticated weaponry with which to harm its enemies, medicine has had to adapt to cope with the number and changing nature of resulting casualties.
War and Medicine exhibition, Richard Hall. Source: Wellcome Collection. Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International (CC BY-NC 4.0).
Concentrating on the modern era, ‘War and Medicine’ considered the constantly evolving relationship between warfare and medicine, beginning with the disasters of the Crimean War and continuing through to recent conflicts in Afghanistan and Iraq. The exhibition highlighted the personal experiences of surgeons, soldiers, civilians, nurses, writers and artists, and looked at the impact of war on the home front as well as on front-line medicine.