A Bibliography of Great War Medicine

 

This list comprises books relating to, or including, medical work in the First World War, together with a number of general books which set the scene.  Its origin lies in the construction of a bibliography for a book on facial injury in the Great War, and the development of a library relating to medical services of that time to accompany the Gillies Archives at Queen Mary's Hospital, Sidcup. Those marked with an * are in the Gillies Library or in my own personal collection.  Items marked with a + indicate that a copy of the relevant extract is in the archives. The annotations are personal comments.  I would be grateful for notification of any significant omissions; in addition, details are sometimes sketchy for works taken from other bibliographies and amendments would be welcome.  Updates are posted regularly.

 

The Gillies Archive contains a number of contemporary papers on facial injury, many written by members of staff of the Queen’s Hospital.  These are not included in this bibliography; with a few important exceptions, material that might be considered a pamphlet rather than a book has also been excluded.

 

Jean-Luc Dupire of Brussels has been most helpful in supplying continental titles.  Recently he has offered the Archives a large selection of doctoral theses in French, many from the same collection.  As these are not strictly books (but neither are they journals) I have included them as a separate section together with some German equivalents.

 

In early 2002 I was contacted by Gary Mitchell of Rochester, NY, who has made a special study (and collection) of items relating to medical services from the USA.  Rather than paste them into the main bibliography I have kept the entire section separate and there is therefore some duplication.  A few of the entries would not qualify under my ground rules for inclusion, but are sufficiently comprehensive or important to be retained.  Many have no listed author and, as researchers may well wish to search for units by number, I have retained Gary’s broad arrangement.  The comments in this section are his.

 

Sections

 

1.   Books related to the Frognal estate and the origins of the Queen’s Hospital at Sidcup, Kent, UK

2.   Personal accounts which include reference to facial injury

3.   Accounts by, or biographies of, doctors, nurses, ambulancemen and others involved in the care of the wounded soldier

4.   Unit records or histories

5.   Medical and nursing textbooks; texts on management & rehabilitation of disability

6.   General books

7.   Journals of hospitals and other units

8.   Poetry and artistic representations of injury

9.   Bibliographies, catalogues, theses etc

10. Fiction

11. French and German doctoral theses

12. Russian material

13. Miscellaneous continental material

14. Mitchell list of American material

15. Historical plastic surgery texts

 

Acknowledgements

 

1.         Frognal and its origins

 

Dr Harris' History of Kent, 1719

A view of Frognal House with formal gardens at the time of its then owner, Roland Tryon, is one of the folio plates in this work

 

*Hasted E.  The History and Topographical Survey of the County of Kent. 

            W.Bristow, Canterbury, 1798

The standard historical survey of Kent, well illustrated with plates and a series of maps of the county hundreds.  Two editions were published; the first, folio, edition was succeeded by a 12 volume Octavo edition with revisions.  Frognal and its history is discussed

 

*Ireland WH.   A New and Complete History of the County of Kent. 

            George Virtue, London, 1828

Contains a plate of Frognal after the formal gardens were replaced with a “Capability Brown” landscape, drawn by George Shepherd

 

* Webb EA, Miller GW, Beckwith J. The History of Chislehurst: its church, manors and parish. 

George Allen, London, 1899 (reprinted Baron Books for the Chislehurst Society, 1999)

            Contains a digest of the family history and ownership of Frognal and Scadbury Park

 

*Frognal Estate Sale Catalogue.  Strutt & Parker, 1915

Fully illustrated with photographs of Frognal House, its grounds, and the extensive farm and residential lots into which the estate had been divided

 

 

2.         Books containing personal accounts of injury and the war

 

*Aitken A.  Gallipoli to the Somme: Recollections of a New Zealand Infantryman

            London, Oxford University Press, 1963

 

*Aldrich M.  On the edge of the war zone.  From the Battle of the Marne to the Entrance of the Stars and Stripes

            Booth, Small Maynard & Co, 1917

 

*Alverdes P.  The Whistlers’ Room (trans B. Creighton)

            London, Martin Secker, 1929

A story of a German hospital room occupied by men injured in the throat, who have tracheostomies and thus “whistled” when attempting to speak.  Classic account of hospital life

 

*Anon (ed).  Letters from Roger I Lee (Lt. Colonel, U.S. Army Medical Corps, 1917-1918

            Brookline, Mass (privately printed), 1962

            Series of chatty letters from May 11th 1917, when Lee crossed the Atlantic, to January 1919.  Photographs include other staff members of Base Hospital No 5 at Camiers

 

Anon.  The Great Advance.  Tales from the Somme Battlefield told by wounded officers and men on their arrival

at Southampton from the Front.

            London, Cassell, 1916

 

*Anon.  Wounded and a Prisoner of War (by an exchanged Officer). 

            Edinburgh & London, William Blackwood, 1916

Hit by a machine gun bullet at Bethancourt, this anonymous officer was captured during the retreat after Mons and imprisoned at Würtzburg.  He was repatriated in 1915

 

*Armstrong WW.  My first week in Flanders

            London, Smith Elder & Co, 1916

A Captain in the Northumberland Fusiliers, he was wounded at St Julien on the 25th April 1916.  The 1/7th Battalion sustained 470 casualties that day.

 

+Ashurst G (ed Holmes R)  My Bit.  A Lancashire Fusilier at War 1914-1918. 

            Marlborough, The Crowood Press, 1987

Contains a remarkable description of how the front line soldier dealt with lice

 

Blacker J (ed). Have you forgotten yet?  The First World War memoirs of C.P. Blacker MC, GM

            London, Leo Cooper, 2000

            Blacker was wounded at the end of the war and describes his journey through the medical system with remarkable calm

 

*Blanchin L.  Chez Eux. Souvenirs de guerre et de captivité
Paris, Librairie Delagrave, 1916
The author was wounded in August 1914 and held as a prisoner in German hospitals and camps until June 1915.

 

*Boderke D (ed).  Words from the Wounded.  Injured Soldiers’ view of the Trenches of the First World War

            Countryside, n.d.

A profusely illustrated book derived from two autograph books belonging to a nurse, Cissie Holden, of Blackburn, Lancs

 

*Booth M.  With the B.E.F. in France

London, The Salvation Army, 1916

Diary notes compiled by Adjutant Mary Booth, granddaughter of the founder of the Salvation Army.  An illustrated personal account with some background on the work of the Army in comforting the wounded

 

*Carr W.  A Time to Leave the Ploughshares.  A Gunner Remembers 1917-18.

            London, Robert Hale, 1985

Describes the facial injury of an artillery officer who had only arrived at the front a few hours before

 

*Carrington CE.  Soldiers from the Wars Returning.

            London, Hutchinson & Co, 1965

A classic account from an officer; robust, with no regrets.  Very much a “Haig” man

 

Carstairs C.  A Generation Missing

            London, William Heinemann, 1930 (repr. Strong Oak Press Ltd, 1989)

            Carroll Carstairs, an American, served with the Royal Artillery and Grenadier Guards having enlisted by claiming to be a Canadian.  He was severely wounded 6 days before the Armistice

 

*“Casualty”.  Contemptible.

            London, Heinemann, 1916

Memoir of the retreat from Mons to the Aisne.  The author appears to have been with the 2nd South Staffs, and was wounded in the head

 

*Cunningham T.  1914-1918: The Final Word

            London, Stagedoor Publishing, 1993

Interviews with survivors, all at the time in their 90s or more (and with memories somewhat dimmed as a result) but including the account of a 104 year old lady ambulance driver

 

Dawson AJ.  The Great Advance (Battle stories of wounded soldiers, recorded by A.J.D.)

London, Cassell, 1916

 

* Fraser of Lonsdale.  My Story of St Dunstans

            London, Harrap & Co, 1961

            Ian Fraser was wounded and blinded at the age of 19 on July 23rd 1916.  Treated at St Dunstan’s, he became its head on the death of its founder, Arthur Pearson, in 1924.  While primarily a history of the institution it provides a moving record and personal insight into the lives of many men blinded by war.

 

Freinet C.  Touché! Souvenirs d’un blessé de guerre

            Atelier du Gué, 1996 (limited edition of 1000)

            Célestin Freinet was the founder of the French educational movement “L’Imprimerie à l’école”; this slim volume was published to celebrate the 100th anniversary of his birth and records his wartime experience as a casualty

 

*Genel R.  Le Journal de mon Père.

Panazol / Paris, Lavauzelle 1990:

Presented by his son, this is the memoir of a soldier, mobilized in 1915, who fought in the infantry.  Injured and paralysed, he was cured by the famous Prof. Babinsky (q.v.) using electric shock treatment.  He joined the French Foreign Legion after the war and served in Morocco where he met Major Zinovi Pechkoff, son of Maxim Gorki, and Colonel Aage (Prince of Denmark and great grandson of King Louis-Philippe of France).

 

*Gibbons F.  And They Thought We Wouldn't Fight

George H. Doran Company, New York, 1918.

Floyd Gibbons, a renowned journalist,  describes being shot in the face at Belleau Wood and his experience as a facial casualty

 

*Glubb J.  Into Battle;  A Soldier's Diary of the Great War. 

            London, Cassell, 1978

Glubb Pasha survived the war and his facial injury (treated at Sidcup, and described here in detail) to play a major part in Britain’s Middle East adventures after the war, although he later fell from favour.

 

*D’Hartoy M.  Au Front. Impressions et souvenirs d'un officier blessé
Paris, Perrin, 1916:

            Maurice d’Hartoy was the pseudonym of Maurice Hanot

 

D'Hartoy M.  Des cris dans la tempète. Nouvelles impressions et nouveaux récits d'un officier blessé

Paris, Perrin, 1919

 

*Hay MV.  Wounded and a prisoner of war

            Edinburgh & London, William Blackwood & Sons, 1930

            Major Hay (3rd Battalion, Gordon Highlanders) was wounded in the head at the start of the war, eventually being repatriated from Würtzberg

 

*Hennebois C.  Aux Mains De L'allemagne. Journal d'un grand blessé

            Paris, Plon-Nourrit, 1919

 

*Kreisler F.  Four weeks in the trenches

            Boston & New York, Houghton & Mifflin, 1915

            Fritz Kreisler, the eminent violinist, served briefly on the Russian Front with the Austrian army.  His brief military career ended when a Cossack charge left him with a bayonet wound and a damaged shoulder (he was kicked by a horse).  Kreisler’s wife was a nurse

 

de Larmandie H.  Blessé, Captif, Délivré. (Wounded, captured and delivered)

Paris, Bloud et Gay, 1916

 

Lehmann F.  Wir von der Infanterie. Tagebuchblätter eines bayerischens Infanteristen aus fünfjähriger Front- und Lazarettzeit (We Infantry. Leaves from a diary of a Bavarian infantryman who spent 5 years on the battle front and in a military hospital)

München, Lehmanns Verlag, 1929

 

*Leleux C.  Feuilles de route d’un ambulancier

Paris, Berger-Levrault, 1915

            One of a series entitled “La Guerre – les Récits des Témoins”

 

+MacGill P.  The Great Push. 

            London, Caliban Books 1984