From the first weeks of the Great War, in August 1914, medical practice was overwhelmed, not simply by the mass casualties produced by the war, but the types of trauma to which human bodies were being subjected. The result was a transformation over four years not just of warfare, but of medicine. Ideas and hypotheses that had been developed in the thrilling decades of laboratory discovery prior to 1914 were implemented on a gigantic scale; and new ones were developed and tested and put into practice, in a matter of months. By 1919, medicine was utterly different than it had been just five years before.

My guest Thomas Helling is Professor of Surgery and head of the Division of General Surgery at the University of Mississippi in Jackson. He has vast experience in military medicine, trauma, and critical care, and is the author of The Great War and the Birth of Modern Medicine, which is the focus of our conversation today.

For Further Information 

Books by Thomas Helling
Timothy J. Jorgensen, "Marie Curie and her X-ray vehicles’ contribution to World War I battlefield medicine"
An old online exhibit– "Harvey Cushing: A Journey Through His Life"