Medical Care in Wartime

Abstract

It is one of the ironies of British history in the Great War that a major increase in life expectancy for civilians occurred while more than half the medical profession had been withdrawn from general or specialist practice to serve in the Forces. As we have seen, death rates due to most infectious diseases declined after 1915, that is, precisely in the years when there was very little medical care to be had at all in many rural and urban areas of Britain. Of course, we must bear in mind that regular medical attendance was the exception rather than the rule for most of the population in the pre-war period; it was only in the last pre-war year that the National Insurance Act, which provided medical care for insured workers, came into force. We must note as well that we are dealing with a period 30 years before the introduction of the powerful antibiotic drugs which have made an enormous difference in the control and eradication of disease. In 1914, most infectious diseases probably took their course, whatever the nature of medical supervision. An extreme example of this was that of the influenza pandemic of 1918–19, which, as we have noted, killed young, healthy adults both in countries depleted of medical care due to military recruitment and in places far removed from the war.