WW1

• Battle examples (WWI 1914-18)


  • 1916: Battle of the Somme – almost 60,000 casualties on the first day
  • 1917: Battle of Arras – use of mines
  • More improvements 1917+ e.g. Battle of Cambrai (blood storage)
• Trenches


  • 2.5m deep
  • Features e.g. sandbags, duckboards
  • No man's land
  • Frontline – fighting/zig-zag pattern
  • Support trench – 60-90m behind/soldiers could retreat here
  • Reserve trench – 350-550m behind the frontline/reinforcements waited here
  • Communication trenches – connected trenches/local roads behind enemy lines
• RAMC Field Ambulances (units not vehicles) set up mobile medical stations


  • Chain of Evacuation
  • RAP, Dressing Station, Casualty Clearing Station, Base Hospital
• FANY = nurses


  • care/driving/kitchens
• Exposed to the weather – cold/frostbite
• Cold, muddy, flooded trenches – Trench Foot – could lead to gangrene – used whale oil to try and stop it
• Dirty water etc. – dysentery
• Lice – Trench Fever – set up delousing stations
• Psychological illness – shell shock = shaking/nightmares/seen as cowards and not understood
• Gas Attacks


  • April 1915+ - Chlorine Gas = slowly suffocated its victims
  • December 1915+ - Phosgene = Suffocation but faster acting
  • July 1917+ - Mustard Gas = Internal and external blisters/burns
  • All first used by the Germans
• Gunshot/shrapnel wounds were common
• 20% of all wounds – head, face and neck
• Brodie Helmet


  • 1915+ - reduced some serious injuries
• Fought on farmland covered in bacteria from fertilisers
• Tetanus, gas gangrene, sepsis were fatal infections
• Treating infections


  • Wound excisions
  • Amputations
  • Antiseptics
  • Carrel-Dakin method
• 1917 – Arras


  • tunnel network/hospital in it with a operating theatre and 700 beds
• Dr Harvey Cushing


  • his techniques halved the number of deaths caused by brain surgery
• Before WWI – aseptic surgery developed
• Mobile x-ray units

  • 6
• Thomas Splint


  • reduced deaths from blood loss from broken bones (80% to 20%) – stopped the leg from moving
• Blood transfusions


  • direct transfusions/portable blood transfusion kits/blood types
• Blood banks

  • Battle of Cambrai – 1917+ - sodium citrate stopped blood from clotting
• Plastic surgery


  • Dr Harold Gillies/tube pedicle