When we think about war and health care our imaginations are immediately drawn to ideas of war wounds, amputations, mobile surgical hospitals, and even psychiatric trauma and PTSD. These are among the most visible marks that war can leave on its participants. But until very recently in human history, war and health care meant something else. … More A Fighting Chance: Disease, Public Health, and the Military, Part 1
From a medical point of view the two military campaigns to capture the Dutch island of Walcheren – the first in 1809, the second in 1944 – could not have been more different. The 1809 British expedition was ravaged by disease, a lethal combination of malaria, typhus, typhoid fever, and dysentery that infected over 60% of the force, killed over 4,000 soldiers, and left tens of thousands as casualties. … More A Fighting Chance: Disease, Public Health, and the Military, Part 3
Two of the most remarkable stories in military medical history happened in the exact same place: Walcheren, a strip of land that sits like a cork in the mouth of the Scheldt River running through the Netherlands and Belgium. … More A Fighting Chance: Disease, Public Health, and the Military, Part 2
