Tag: War
-
Bad blood: The drama of bloodshed
Emily BoyleDublin, Ireland In some professions, bloodstained clothing is a normal part of the job. The two jobs that come to mind principally are a butcher and a vascular surgeon, although the latter would probably prefer not to be associated with the former! In vascular surgery not every operation results in bloodstained scrubs, although for…
-
First principles
Charles G. KelsSan Antonio, Texas, United States The law of war is enshrined in treaties but steeped in blood. In 1859, a young Swiss businessman was traveling through Italy when a savage battle between French and Austrian forces commenced. Seeing “how many unfortunate men were left behind, lying helpless on the naked ground in their…
-
Blood at Maidan – Kyiv, Ukraine 2014
Olena KaguiRhode Island, United States There was no physical blood present when I stepped onto Maidan Square in Kyiv, Ukraine. Yet signs of it were everywhere. Bullet holes pierced the shields and helmets that memorialized the fallen. Flowers, the color of blood, sat inside the cavern of the helmet. The space, once occupied by a…
-
The bulletproof doctor
Ammar Saad Ottawa, Ontario, Canada The Last sleep of Arthur in Avalon is a 1880’s painting that depicts the deaths of Burne-Jones’s close friends which ignited his feelings of solitude and awareness of his own mortality. (By Edward Burne-Jones. Ponce Museum of Art, Ponce, Puerto Rico) I had been admitted to the Damascus University…
-
Letter from South Sudan: War through a mother’s eyes
Wangira Dorcas OsungaKenya, Nairobi Our village Mading is at the heart of South Sudan. We are 120 miles away from Juba, the capital. We are at the East Bank, fed by the White Nile. The weather is tropical, with a rare wet season. Our land is not green, nor does it bear much fruit. Perhaps that…
-
Building a legend
Vladimir Simunovic Croati During the war in Bosnia-Herzegovina the number of health care professionals declined precipitously. None of those who stayed were trained or mentally prepared to work under war conditions. Nobody had taught us skills that would be useful in war, and some of us found ourselves in roles we never expected to…
-
The American Civil War as a biological phenomenon: Did Salmonella or Sherman win the war for the North?
Michael Brown Chicago, Illinois, United States Reexamining Civil War deaths Patients in Ward K of Armory Square Hospital – Washington, DC, 1865 A demographic historian, J. David Hacker, recently discovered an unfortunate truth; using newly digitized data from the 1860, 1870, and 1880 censuses, he constructed new estimates of Northern and Southern Civil…
-
Peleliu as a paradigm for PTSD: The two thousand yard stare
Gregory Rutecki Cleveland, Ohio, United States “I noticed a tattered marine…staring stiffly at nothing. His mind had crumbled in battle…his eyes were like two black empty holes in his head…Last evening he came down out of the hills. Told to get some sleep, he found a shell crater and slumped into it…First light has…
-
Medical and scientific innovations arising from warfare
Brian OmondiNairobi, Kenya Perhaps the only bright side of war is that it impels nations to make medical and scientific innovations. War has long been portrayed as being the best school for surgeons and even for doctors.1 An association between medical services and the military can be traced back to ancient Greece, and the link has…