Medicine and surgery in the Great War 1914-1918 : an exhibition to commemorate the 50th anniversary of the armistice, 11 November 1918.

  • Wellcome Institute of the History of Medicine.
Date:
1968
Catalogue details

Licence: Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International (CC BY-NC 4.0)

Credit: Medicine and surgery in the Great War 1914-1918 : an exhibition to commemorate the 50th anniversary of the armistice, 11 November 1918. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    the war was summed up by McCollum. He himself had shared in the discovery of fat-soluble vitamin A in butter-fat and egg. 280. Berlin Medical Society, The Starving of Germany, Berlin, 1919. Horri fying and indignant accounts by German medical men about the low nutritional state of the people. 281. Medical Research Committee, Report on the Present State of Knowledge Concerning Accessory Food F actors {Vitamins), London, H.M.S.O., 1919. Presents the essential facts on this new subject as they were then known. 282. Ministry of Munitions, Health of the Munition Worker. Handbook prepared by the Health of Munition Workers' Committee , London, H.M.S.O., 1917. The advice in this manual is based on close statistical analysis of numerous cases of industrial fatigue; its appearance in 1917 reflects increasing concern about civilian health. 283. Medical Research Committee, The Mortalities of Birth, Infancy and Childhood , London, H.M.S.O., 1918. Expresses doubts about the alleged benefits of ante-natal clinics, and recommends a greater emphasis on re-housing. Influenza It has been estimated that more than 21 million people in the world died as a result of the 1918-19 influenza pandemic. The epidemic came in two waves, starting almost simultaneously in China, Japan and the United States. The first wave, in spring 1918, was mild. American troops in French base ports were the first to show signs of the disease. By April the French, British and German armies were infected and, by June, parts of South America and India, as well as England, also. The second wave struck in the autumn of 1918 and spread through out the world with devastating effects. Clinical signs of this by now much more virulent infection were acute pulmonary inflammation, leading to lung edema, and bronchopneumonia. Widespread malnu trition and fatigue caused these symptoms to be even more severe than they would otherwise have been. In Scotland alone, between July 1918 and April 1919, deaths amounted to 17,575. 284. Medical Research Council, Studies of Influenza in Hospitals of the British Armies in France, 1918 , London, H.M.S.O., 1919. A collection of statistics and case reports presented as part of the national effort to understand how and why the 1918 influenza pandemic occurred.