Abstract
According to French military doctors, on the western front the Great War has not experienced epedimics, a unique fact in the history of warfare. This prophylactic discipline in the armed forces starkly contrasts with the negligence of civilian public health. What impact did wartime conditions have on civilian health? Did the state of war rally civilian and military medical authorities to join a united front against epidemics, or did it divide the nation into two categories? Achievements of the French Military Health Service, war tuberculosis, depletion of medical manpower among civilian population, influenza and other contagious diseases (including VD) are reviewed. We suspect that protection against epidemics was unequal on the home and battle fronts, that civilians were sacrificed for the army.
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Literatur
Toubert, J., Le Service de santé militaire au Grand Quartier Général français (1918–1919), suivi de Documents de statistiques concernant la guerre mondiale et l’après-guerre, Paris 1934, p.100.
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Patterson, K.D./Pyle, G.F., The Geography and mortality of 1918 influenza pandemic, in: Bulletin of the History of Medicine 1991, pp.4–7, 14; see also Beveridge, W.I.B., Influenza: the last great pleague. An unfinished story of discovery, London 1977, p.21. The American origin of the spring wave was mentioned after the war: Delater, La Grippe dans la nation armée de 1918 à 1921, in: Revue d’hygiène 1923, p.409.
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Murard, L., Zylberman, P. (2003). The Nation Sacrificed for the Army? The Failing French Public Health, 1914–1918. In: Eckart, W.U., Gradmann, C. (eds) Die Medizin und der Erste Weltkrieg. Neuere Medizin- und Wissenschaftsgeschichte Quellen und Studien, vol 3. Centaurus Verlag & Media, Herbolzheim. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-86226-369-1_18
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