The dictionary describes the word humane as humane adj. Kind, compassionate, merciful. and this was indeed so in the case of the volunteers who worked tirelessly to ease the suffering of the wounded soldiers of all combatants in the fields of northern France and Belgium, during the First World War. In the early days of the war, army nursing was strictly a male preserve, until it was necessary to recruit female nurses from the ranks of middle and upper class ladies. The warm summer days preceding the outbreak of war lent an air of adventure to the proceedings, and the feeling was that the coming conflict would be fought in a similar fashion to the previous cavalry and infantry- based battles of the nineteenth century. A few months intensive combat would be sufficient and everyone would be back in time for Christmas dinner. Similarly, these ladies were caught up in the initial fervour of patriotism, and being prohibited from fighting at the Front, were keen to do their bit for their country and their soldiers.
Tired of knitting items of clothing destined for the trenches, they wanted to do something a little more substantial. The concept of `noblesse oblige` was suddenly revived as many stately homes and country houses opened their doors to wounded officers in need of convalescence, and everyone wanted to be seen in a nurse`s uniform. Indeed there were many well- connected aristocratic ladies who set up their own private ambulance groups, much to governmental consternation. The Dowager Duchess of Sutherland, through her contacts and single-minded determination, assisted the wounded at Namur, and used the fact that she was previously acquainted with both the German commandant and aide-de-camp to pester them for safe passage to Maubeuge. She wanted to get through the enemy lines to tend the Allied troops, but the commandant of Maubeuge put an escorted charabanc at her disposal and sent her to Ostend. The Millicent Sutherland Ambulance reached Renaix where the officer in charge sent them with a military escort to Brussels, where the American Ambassador, arranged for an American journalist to escort the party, with two German soldiers, to The Hague and thence Flushing and home.
The Essay on Post-war Soldier And Civilian Expectations Of The British Government
British soldiers and civilians had high expectations of their government following World War 1, most of which did not eventuate. The soldiers needed understanding of their suffering and emotional pains of the war, while the British civilians felt that Germany’s reparations were highly important in the short-term. Employment was a significant issue to both groups, with the soldiers arriving ...
The publicity generated by her escapades set up an efficient and much- needed Red Cross hospital outside Calais. Women especially were keen to take up the great adventure because, for them, that` s exactly what it was. Many ladies lived very stifling lives, barred by society `s Edwardian ideals of conventional female behaviour, The Angel of the Hearth became The Angel of The Trenches. These women now possessed a measure of economic and social independence away from home, and the awareness that they were performing dangerous and arduous tasks, thus gaining a sense of self-consciousness and status. This fact did not find favour with the older generation, who feared that the experiences of war would de-flower their daughters, in all senses of the word. So it was that many middle and upper class daughters found themselves as VAD s (Voluntary Aid Detachments), learning to assist medical staff as best they could.
Now the VAD s , whose hands `this time last year` had seldom touched anything so down to earth as a dish cloth or sweeping brush, were scrubbing and polishing until their arms ached; running at the beck and call of harassed nurses and sisters until their feet swelled through the laces of their sensible shoes; emptying bedpans with hardly a wrinkle of their dainty noses; sterilising instruments in operating theatres ; holding kidney trays of instruments, and looking on as nurses and doctors probed wounds so terrible that only the most hardened of stomachs could look on them with equanimity. Now they were accepted in war hospitals that were desperately short of staff- though not always with good grace. McDonald ,L. 1980, p 69. A volunteer nurse could expect to work under fully-trained nurses, under the direction of the Officer in charge and the Matron of the hospital. Her duties would include sweeping, dusting polishing of brasses, cleaning of ward tables and patients’ lockers, cleaning of ward sinks and ward utensils, washing of patients’ crockery and sorting of linen.
The Term Paper on Florence Nightingale Nursing War Hospitals
Florence Nightingale is best known for her radical innovations in nursing care. She was a pioneer in nursing and a reformer of hospital sanitation methods. For most of her life, Florence pushed for reform of the British military health-care system. With that, the nursing profession started gaining the respect it deserved. Besides being a nurse and reformer, Florence Nightingale was a statistician. ...
These, and any nursing duties which they were considered qualified to perform, would be allotted to them by the Matron of the Hospital. They would be required to live in and be between 21 and 48 years of age. For Foreign Service, the age range changed to 23 and 42, but of course many of the younger women under 23 lied about their age in order to gain a foreign posting. A uniform allowance was payable at a rate of 2 10s per six month engagement, after a month`s probation, and recruits were required to sign an agreement to serve for six months, with a salary of 20 per annum, rising to 22 10s after the initial six months. Those who signed up for as long as required would earn an extra 2 10s each half year up to a maximum of 30 per annum. A nurse`s leave was seven days in the first six months, and fourteen days during the second six month period, and unless there was a very good reason, she was expected to renew her contract in the hospital to which she had been appointed, if asked by the Matron, who was not keen on VADs moving about to other hospitals every six or seven months. The feeling being that she had spent a great deal of time and effort in bringing along her recruit and did n`t want another matron to get the benefit, plus the new ones took some getting used to.
The major difference with this war, as the example of the actions on the Marne, Aisne, and at Mons exemplified, was that the technological advancements were such that men could be killed more effectively, and indeed more horrifically with such innovations as chlorine and phosgene gas, and liquid fire. The skin of victims of mustard gas blistered, the eyes became very sore and they began to vomit. Mustard gas caused internal and external bleeding and attacked the bronchial tubes, stripping off the mucous membrane. This was extremely painful and most soldiers had to be strapped to their beds. It could take as long as four or five weeks for a victim to die of mustard gas poisoning. The new kinds of munitions rendered accepted military strategy obsolete.
The Term Paper on Medicine During the Civil War
"When the war began, the United States Army medical staff consisted of only the surgeon general, thirty surgeons, and eighty-three assistant surgeons. Of these, twenty-four resigned to "go South," and three other assistant surgeons were promptly dropped for "disloyalty." Thus the medical corps began its war service with only eighty seven men. When the war ended in 1865, more than eleven thousand ...
Sir John French, Commander in Chief of The British Forces, wrote; No previous experience, no conclusion I had been able to draw from campaigns in which I had taken part, or from a close study of the new conditions in which the war of today is waged, had led me to anticipate a war of positions. All my thoughts, all my prospective plans, all my possible alternatives of action, were concentrated upon a war of movement and manoeuvre. (Lord French,1914, 1919 p.11).
Initially, the medical profession were ill -equipped technically and logistically to deal with the incidence of new types of wounds, most notably the incidence of gas-gangrene, a bacterial infection caught via the soil in the trenches, previously unknown and consequently claiming as many lives as the combat itself. Modern antibiotics, sulphonamide drugs and penicillin were notably absent from The Front, but the research borne out of necessity accelerated, as it almost always does, the process of discovery and application. Probably the most notable developments were made in the field of plastic surgery, where a number of skilled specialists would come together to rebuild a soldiers`s face. Dr. Kazanjian was a dentist, but his knowledge of the jaw, his talent and interest in the subject meant that although unqualified as a surgeon, he was acknowledged as a top specialist in the field. Upon his return to America, he took the necessary surgical and medical degrees and became a founding father in American plastic surgery. In England the techniques of skin-grafting and bone- transplanting were in an experimental stage, but many men had their faces re-built as well as possible, by the pioneering work of Francis Derwent Wood, sculptor and Associate of the Royal Academy who as an RAMC orderly came up with the solution of creating a mask based on the soldier`s own photographs.
The painstaking work at least gave these disfigured soldiers a measure of dignity when they eventually came to face the outside world again. The war ground to a stalemate, and the flower of European youth faced each other across a barren landscape of mud and carnage in the fields of Flanders and Northern France, with neither side prepared to negotiate. The ill- fated and ill- conceived Gallipoli campaign, served only to drain the already stretched resources at the Western Front, and there was a desperate need for female doctors and nurses. The Scottish Women`s Hospital at Royaumont was started by the tenacious Dr. Elsie Inglis and was completely staffed by female doctors and specialists. Not only had they battled to get into the medical profession, they had to battle to get involved in the war, as it was felt that they would be unable to exert sufficient `military discipline`. Drs.
The Essay on World War I French Germans 000
World War I Nothing was a bigger disaster than what happened in World War I. This was such a bad war because everyone in the world has allies, and the allies are in oath to help there ally when things get rough or that country is going to war. What I am here to inform you about is how one of the major countries and why one of the biggest powers in the world played a big part in World War I. This ...
Louisa Garrett Anderson and Flora Murray, were familiar with the prejudices of the Home Office in their dealings as suffragettes, and offered to equip a surgical unit in France for the French wounded, where they would be most needed, instead. The French Red Cross formally accepted their offer. The same prejudices faced them when they opened the Endell Street Hospital in May 1915 although the twenty six thousand patients who passed through the doors were eternally grateful. They (the patients) were offered the chance of transfer to hospitals run by male medical staff, but the offer was ….
