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How has technology changed warfare
How world war led to improvement in medicine technology -pdf
Technology advancements in warfare
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As the very nature of warfare has changed throughout the ages, simultaneously the capability to deal with these technological advances has evolved. Weapons have arguably become more detrimental and in turn the casualties have risen and injuries have become more severe. Therefore, medicine has had to adapt to changes of weaponry in order to maintain a high population, otherwise wars would be lost and won more easily and the death toll would be elevated. There are four wars in the time period given that have contributed to the advancement of medicine; The Crimean War; The American Civil War; The Second Boar War; and World War One. Each will be investigated to determine how medicine may have changed the course of the war and if there is any correlation between the advancement of weaponry and medicine.
Firstly, the Crimean War (1853 – 1856) possibly saw the largest change in terms of nursing and the role of women. Extreme weather conditions in the winter between 1854 and 1855 plus heavy casualties sustained by the British are perhaps the main reasons why medical innovations occurred. During the war, it is estimated that 19,584 officers and soldiers died and a further 2,873 were permanently incapacitated of which only 3,754 died on the battlefield. The remainder of deaths occurred as a result of the inefficiency of the British Medical department. Hygiene was the principal problem as preventable diseases like scurvy affected 85% of casualties taken to hospital. The first hospital Florence Nightingale occupied in Scutari saw some of the worst death rates as most of those admitted were already dying of infected wounds, severe blood loss, exposure or a combination of all three factors. However, this led Nightingale to seek improvement i...
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Robinson, Bruce. "BBC - History - British History in Depth: Victorian Medicine - From Fluke to Theory." BBC - Homepage. Web. 01 Aug. 2011. .
Sohn, Emily. "How the Civil War Changed Modern Medicine : Discovery News."Discovery News: Earth, Space, Tech, Animals, History, Adventure, Human, Autos. 8 Apr. 2011. Web. 1 Aug. 2011. .
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People did not expect the war to develop in the way it did. In 1914
The Medical advancements of WWI had a huge impact on the war; many soldiers’ lives were saved due to advances in medicine and the invention of the ambulance. The First World War had many casualties and deaths, many of these deaths were not caused by the “invisible soldier”. Most of the injuries in the war were caused by large explosions and gunshot wounds. With the invention of the ambulance, many soldiers were aided sooner rather than later, resulting in their lives being saved.
In the early 1900’s the United States’ medical field was stagnant causing many deaths in wartime. The majority of deaths in war times were often caused by diseases that were incurable. The United States medical field had to grow to current needs in war but it grew very slowly. The United States Army Ambulance Service was established on June 23, 1917 and the Sanitary Corps established one week later on the 30th. (David Steinert). The Sanitary Corps quickly expanded to nearly 3,000 officers during World War I but, this field was still much smaller than any other
During the war, twice as many men died from disease and wound infection as died from a bullet in the battlefield; this was due to unsanitary and crowded conditions at the campsites. Clara cared ...
Alchin, Linda. “Elizabethan Medicine and Illnesses” www.elizabethan-era.org. UK. N.P. 16 May 2012 Web. 17 Jan 2014
Hygiene was extremely poor prior to and during World War 1, especially for soldiers. Because of this and the fact that fighting soldiers couldn’t clean up wounds quickly enough, there were many deaths caused by infection alone. One big issue was trench foot. This was an awful infection caused by soldiers standing in the trenches for too long during battles. Over the course of the war, hygiene and infectious issues were being better dealt with. These issues led to vaccinations and treatment advancements. The earliest forms of the vaccinations and treatments used today were actually introduced in 1914. Those vaccinations and treatments have been improved upon since World War 1. One of the most fascinating things regarding medical procedures at this time has to be blood transfusions. It was 1917, when the first of hundreds of millions of blood transfusions was made. This idea has been improved upon as
The focus of this investigation will be on the answering of the question “To what extent did the invention and innovation of new weaponry during the 19th century affected the American Civil War?”. The most prevalent weapons of the time will be described, along with the major weapons manufacturers of the period leading to the Civil War. Multiple military innovations will be looked at and their implications on warfare will be discussed, considering how many weapons were improved and how this affected their efficiency in battle. The number of casualties in the American Civil War will also be displayed and it will be explained as to why the amount of fatalities was so high.
Most of these medical advances were a result and were an influence of World War I. Probably one of the most important medical advances was the discovery of penicillin in 1928 by a Scottish, microbiologist named Alexander Fleming, he had actually accidently discovered it, when he noticed that a bacteria culture he had been growing, had stopped, he realized that it had been contaminated by a rare form of mold called Penicillin and that it had killed the bacteria.
Diseases did not only affect the soldiers in a tremendous way. As I will discuss in greater detail further in this paper, diseases gave an advantage to the Northern side of the war, and this played a role in their victory. Additionally, the treatments and discoveries that were made as diseases were treated led to spillover effects that have changed certain aspects of our lives today, providing advances in the realm of medicine. The purpose of this paper is to demonstrate how diseases played a larger role in the Civil War than is generally known. Diseases did not affect the soldiers fighting for the Northern side and the Southern side in an equal fashion. In contrast, the Confederate soldiers were hindered much more deeply than the Union soldiers. This gave an advantage to the Union side.
"The Impact of the Renaissance on Medicine." Hutchinson Encyclopedia. 2011. eLibrary. Web. 13 Apr. 2014.
Stepansky, Paul E., Ph. D. "Category Archives: Medicine in WWI." Medicine Health and History. February 11, 2012. Accessed January 13, 2014. http://adoseofhistory.com/category/military-psychiatry/medicine-in-wwi/.
The war office avoided hiring more after their poor reputation, nevertheless Nightingale received a letter in late 1854. Her success in doing so was due to her concern with the sanitation of the hospital. When Nightingale arrived in Crimea on the British Base, Scutari, she was met with filthy floors, bugs, and rats under the beds (History.com, 2009). This is when Florence took action and began to sanitize and clean the hospital as best she could.
In 1849 Florence went abroad to study the European hospital system. In 1853 she became the superintendent for the Hospital for Invalid Gentlewomen in London. In 1854 Florence raised the economic and productive aspect of women's status by volunteering to run all the nursing duties during the Crimean War. With her efforts the mortality rates of the sick and wounded soldiers was reduced. While being a nurse was her profession and what she was known for, she used statistics to achieve...
She served as a nurse and tended to wounded soldiers. She became known as “The Lady with the Lamp” after she made her nightly rounds by lamplight. On October 21, 1854 she and her staff of 38 volunteer women nurses, that she trained, were sent to the Ottoman Empire. They traveled 295 miles by sea to where the British camp was based. They arrived in November 1854 and were appalled when they found the poor care given to the injured soldiers. The current medical staff was overworked, there was a shortage of medications, hygiene was being neglected and fatal infections were common. The men were kept in rooms without blankets or enough food. They were unwashed and still wore their dirty uniforms. The medical staff on hand objected to her views and felt her comments were belittling them as professionals. Both the military officers in charge and the doctors made her feel unwelcome. During her first winter in Scutari, 4077 soldiers died. Ten times more soldiers perished from illnesses such as typhus, typhoid, cholera and dysentery than from actual battle wounds. She sent back a plea for help from the British. The government had a hospital commissioned and designed in England and shipped over to Scutari. This resulted in the death rate being reduced from 42% to 2%, either by making improvements in hygiene herself, or by requesting the Sanitary Commission. Six months after she arrived at the camp, the British government
Before the modernization and reform of their profession in the mid-1800s, nurses were believed to perform “women’s work”, which implied menial duties, unskilled service, and an overall lack of skill (Garey, "Sentimental women need not apply"). This mentality was substantiated by the “untrained attendants, [including] past patients, vagrants, and prostitutes,” that performed a variety of nursing tasks (Garey). Florence Nightingale’s nursing experiences during the Crimean War, her subsequent publication of Notes on Nursing, and her work to build up professionalism within the field transformed the way that the world and society viewed nursing. She introduced invigorating ideas of patient care, nursing roles and responsibilities, and was a strong proponent of nursing education. Nightingale’s overall work inspired and changed the profession of nursing, laying the foundation for its