More than Bombs and Bandages exposes the false assumption that military nurses only nursed. Based on author Kirsty Harris’ CEW Bean Prize-winning PhD thesis, this is a book that is far removed from the ‘devotion to duty’ stereotyping offering an intriguing and sometimes gut-wrenching insight into the Australian Army Nursing Service (AANS) during World War I. More than Bombs and Bandages provides rich pickings for all those interested in nursing history, women in the Australian military the application of medical treatments and World War I. What I enjoyed most about is Dr Kirsty Harris’s ability to reflect those nurses voices in a way that was so real – one could be there, the settings were so well understood from her research and the language kind of made a time warp in the reading. Very satisfying. As you know I have that Peter Rees book, but I could not get into it after reading the historical one. It was like comparing a great documentary to Facebook trivia!!! Rev’d Dr Barbara Oudt

The Politics of Wounds explores military patients' experiences of frontline medical evacuation, war surgery, and the social world of military hospitals during the First World War. The proximity of the front and the colossal numbers of wounded created greater public awareness of the impact of the war than had been seen in previous conflicts, with serious political consequences. Frequently referred to as 'our wounded', the central place of the soldier in society, as a symbol of the war's shifting meaning, drew contradictory responses of compassion, heroism, and censure. Wounds also stirred romantic and sexual responses. This volume reveals the paradoxical situation of the increasing political demand levied on citizen soldiers concurrent with the rise in medical humanitarianism and war-related charitable voluntarism. The physical gestures and poignant sounds of the suffering men reached across the classes, giving rise to convictions about patient rights, which at times conflicted with the military's pragmatism. Why, then, did patients represent military medicine, doctors and nurses in a negative light? The Politics of Wounds listens to the voices of wounded soldiers, placing their personal experience of pain within the social, cultural, and political contexts of military medical institutions. The author reveals how the wounded and disabled found culturally creative ways to express their pain, negotiate power relations, manage systemic tensions, and enact forms of 'soft resistance' against the societal and military expectations of masculinity when confronted by men in pain. The volume concludes by considering the way the state ascribed social and economic values on the body parts of disabled soldiers though the pension system.

This book contributes to the global turn in First World War studies by exploring Australians’ engagements with the conflict across varied boundaries and by situating Australian voices and perspectives within broader, more complex contexts. This diverse and multifaceted collection includes chapters on the composition and contribution of the Australian Imperial Force, the experiences of prisoners of war, nurses and Red Cross workers, the resonances of overseas events for Australians at home, and the cultural legacies of the war through remembrance and representation. The local-global framework provides a fresh lens through which to view Australian connections with the Great War, demonstrating that there is still much to be said about this cataclysmic event in modern history.

Historically, prolonged campaigns have been frequently lost or won because of the greater fitness of one of the combatant armies. In the twentieth century, infection was still a major problem, leading to withdrawal from Gallipoli, and the near defeat of the Allies due to malaria early in the Second World War’s Pacific campaign. Malaria emerged again as a major problem in the Vietnam War. The Australian Army Medical Corps, founded in 1901, learned from past medical experience. However, errors leading to significant morbidity did occur mainly in relation to malaria. These errors included lack of instruction of doctors sent to New Guinea with the Australian Force in the Great War, inadequate prophylactic measures against malaria in New Guinea early in World War Two, failure to perceive the threat of emerging resistant strains of malaria in the 1960s, and military commanders not fully implementing the recommendations of their medical advisers. Many Australian campaigns have taken place in tropical locations; a substantial amount of scientific work to prevent and manage tropical diseases has therefore been conducted by the Army Medical Corps’ medical researchers—particularly in the Land Headquarters Medical Research Unit and the Army Malaria Institute. Their work extends well beyond the military, greatly improving health outcomes throughout the world. This book recognises the efforts of both.

Australian and New Zealand volunteers were already in Serbia, treating wounded Serbian soldiers and fighting a typhus epidemic, before the ANZACs landed at Gallipoli in 1915. The Gallipoli Campaign sealed Serbia’s fate, however, as Germany, Austria-Hungary and Bulgaria moved to secure a land supply corridor to Turkey through Serbia. Australians and New Zealanders accompanied the Serbian Army on a deadly retreat over wintry mountains to the Adriatic coast. When the fighting shifted to the Salonika or ‘Macedonian’ Front, many served there with the British Army, the Royal Flying Corps, two AIF units and six Royal Australian Navy destroyers in the Adriatic and Aegean Seas. Some died in action, others from disease. Several hundred doctors, nurses and orderlies treated the wounded and sick in an Australian-led volunteer hospital and in British and New Zealand Army hospitals. The author Miles Franklin was a medical orderly supporting the Serbian Army; her little-known memoir is quoted extensively in this book. Fifteen hundred Australians and New Zealanders served on this little known yet crucial battlefront. Now for the first time we have an engaging and comprehensive account of what they experienced and achieved in the Great War.

This handbook covers the technical, social and cultural history of surgery. It reflects the state of the art and suggests directions for future research. It discusses what is different and specific about the history of surgery - a manual activity with a direct impact on the patient’s body. The individual entries in the handbook function as starting points for anyone who wants to obtain up-to-date information about an area in the history of surgery for purposes of research or for general orientation. Written by 26 experts from 6 countries, the chapters discuss the essential topics of the field (such as anaesthesia, wound infection, instruments, specialization), specific domains areas (for example, cancer surgery, transplants, animals, war), but also innovative themes (women, popular culture, nursing, clinical trials) and make connections to other areas of historical research (such as the history of emotions, art, architecture, colonial history). Chapters 16 and 18 of this book are available open access under a CC BY 4.0 license at link.springer.com

A History of South Australia investigates the state's history from before the arrival of the first European explorers to today.