Tag Archives: WW1

Book review: The Facemaker: One Surgeon’s Battle to Mend the Disfigured Soldiers of World War I

August 8, 2022

Howard Fischer Uppsala, Sweden   Facsimile of a wax teaching model made by Sergeant Thomas H. Kelsey for the New Zealand Medical Corps facial and jaw injury unit, c. 1917. British National Army Museum Copyright, released under CC BY-NC-ND 4.0 license. “A chirurgien should have…the harte of a lyin…the eyes of a hawke…[and] the hands […]

Arthur William Mayo-Robson

June 9, 2022

JMS Pearce Hull, England, United Kingdom   Figure 1. Arthur William Mayo-Robson. Photogravure. Wellcome Images via Wikimedia. Public domain. Arthur William Robson (1853–1933) (Fig 1) was born the son of a chemist John Bonnington Robson, in Filey, a popular Yorkshire seaside resort.1 He later added Mayo to his surname. He is reported as attending Wesley […]

Howard H. Tooth CB., CMG., MD., FRCP.

December 21, 2020

JMS Pearce Hull, England   Fig 1. Howard H Tooth. Via Wikimedia  Howard Tooth (1856-1925) was one of many physicians who served well their patients and their profession, but who would be unknown save for a syndrome that bears and perpetuates their name. Howard Tooth (Fig 1) was born in Hove, Sussex, educated at Rugby […]

Have we learned anything from 1918-1919 influenza?

June 1, 2020

Edward Winslow Wilmette, Illinois, United States   Actual daily deaths from influenza, September to November 1918. Monthly Bulletin of the Department of Health, December 1918. NYC Municipal Library. Source.  The 2020 viral pandemic (COVID-19),1 in spite of being caused by a novel virus family, bears striking epidemiological and social resemblance to the influenza pandemic of 1918.2 […]

“Mental Cases” by Wilfred Owen: The suffering of soldiers in World War I

April 24, 2018

Alice MacNeill Oxford, United Kingdom   Wilfred Owen plate from Poems (1920). Internet Archive via Wikimedia. Public domain. Who are these? Why sit they here in twilight? Wherefore rock they, purgatorial shadows, Drooping tongues from jaws that slob their relish, Baring teeth that leer like skulls’ tongues wicked? Stroke on stroke of pain, — but […]