This volume highlights the people and scientific developments in military medicine through the ages, concentrating on medical advances that changed both warfare and societies at home. Thanks to advances in field medicine and improved mobility and efficiency of medical units, the death rate of soldiers injured during battle has dramatically declined in the last 100 years. Nowadays, with forward medical stations operating close to battle lines and medical transports (ground and air) at hand, injured soldiers survive their battle wounds. Military Medicine: From Ancient Times to the 21st Century provides expert coverage of the key role medical advances and practices have played in the evolution of warfare, and how many of those advances and practices have been put to work saving and improving civilian lives as well. Military Medicine surveys the development of military medicine from its prehistoric origins through modern threats and practice. That coverage is followed by over 200 of alphabetically organized entries with special emphasis placed on those areas with the most dramatic applications to civilian medicine, including triage and trauma management, treatment for infections, emergency surgical procedures, and more.

Fought on almost every continent, World War II confronted American GIs with the unprecedented threats to life and health posed by combat on Arctic ice floes and African deserts, in steamy jungles and remote mountain villages, in the stratosphere and the depths of the sea.

Out of the Crucible: How the U.S. Military Transformed Combat Casualty Care in Iraq and Afghanistan edited by Arthur L. Kellermann, MD and MPH, and Eric Elster, MD is now available by the US Army, Borden Institute. This comprehensive resource, part of the renowned Textbooks of Military Medicine series, documents one of the most extraordinary achievements in the history of American medicine - the dramatic advances in combat casualty care developed during Operations Enduring Freedom and Operation Iraqi Freedom. Each chapter is written by one or more military health professionals who played an important role in bringing the advancement to America's military health system. Written in plain English and amply illustrated with informative figures and photographs, Out of the Crucible engages and informs the American public and policy makers about how America's military health system, devised, tested and widely adopted numerous inventions, innovations, technologies that collectively produced the highest survival rate from battlefield trauma in the history of warfare.

This work focuses primarily on military medicine during this conflict. Historian Vincent J. Cirillo argues that there is a universal element of military culture that stifles medical progress. This war gave army medical officers an opportunity to introduce to the battlefield new medical technology, including the X-ray, aseptic surgery and sanitary systems derived from the germ theory. With few exceptions, however, their recommendations were ignored almost completely.

Advances in trauma care have accelerated over the past decade, spurred by the significant burden of injury from the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq. Between 2005 and 2013, the case fatality rate for United States service members injured in Afghanistan decreased by nearly 50 percent, despite an increase in the severity of injury among U.S. troops during the same period of time. But as the war in Afghanistan ends, knowledge and advances in trauma care developed by the Department of Defense (DoD) over the past decade from experiences in Afghanistan and Iraq may be lost. This would have implications for the quality of trauma care both within the DoD and in the civilian setting, where adoption of military advances in trauma care has become increasingly common and necessary to improve the response to multiple civilian casualty events. Intentional steps to codify and harvest the lessons learned within the military's trauma system are needed to ensure a ready military medical force for future combat and to prevent death from survivable injuries in both military and civilian systems. This will require partnership across military and civilian sectors and a sustained commitment from trauma system leaders at all levels to assure that the necessary knowledge and tools are not lost. A National Trauma Care System defines the components of a learning health system necessary to enable continued improvement in trauma care in both the civilian and the military sectors. This report provides recommendations to ensure that lessons learned over the past decade from the military's experiences in Afghanistan and Iraq are sustained and built upon for future combat operations and translated into the U.S. civilian system.