During World War I the enormous amount of wounded and sick called for drastic medical measures. Medicine had to adapt to the new circumstances. The numbers of physicians and nurses participating in military or humanitarian medicine grew enormously. Question is: did this only affect size and numbers, or character as well? Is wartime medical care in essence the same as peacetime medical care, or is it fundamentally different? In his lecture Dutch historian Dr. Leo van Bergen - author of numerous articles on medicine and war and two books relating World War I, the non-fictional Before my Helpless Sight and the fictional Among the Dying - will try to answer this question. He will first sketch the character of the war, the way medicine tried to deal with this, and then go into how this affected medics and medical care.
Dr. Leo Van Bergen’s research is focused on the history of war and peace and the relationship between war and medicine, with an interest in subjects such as the Dutch Red Cross. He is attached to the Dutch Institute for Military History and is on the editorial board of the peer-reviewed magazine Conflict, Medicine and Survival.
www.leovanbergen.nl
In Flanders Fields Museum, Gateways to the First World War and the University of Kent present a series of eight seminars, free and open to all.
Seminars will take place in Canterbury during the autumn term and in Ypres during the spring term.
Venue: Keynes Seminar Room 13, University of Kent
