Uncovering the unsung medical heroes of the Great War

The expression 'standing on the shoulders of giants', made famous by Isaac Newton, is often used to acknowledge the fact that no discovery or leap forward happens in isolation and that progress owes to the efforts of all the minds gone before, whose work we build upon. While we might assume the history of science and medicine has been largely characterised and all the major players credited in some way, there are still unsung heroes out there waiting to be 'discovered'. Emily Mayhew, a Research Associate in the Centre for Co-curricular Studies and professional historian, recently made such a revelation through her research on the medical infrastructure of World War I and the stretcher bearers that were at the heart of it. The really important story was the idea of pushing medicine forward, towards the battle, so that you started to treat people as close to the front line, and as soon as they were wounded, as possible Emily wrote her PhD thesis at Imperial (in what was then the London Centre for the History of Science, Medicine, and Technology) on the birth of modern plastic surgery in World War II, focusing on maverick surgeon Archibald McIndoe who pioneered new techniques to treat airmen with serious burns. That work became a book - The Reconstruction of Warriors - then a BBC documentary and now possibly a feature film. For her second book, Emily wanted to take a step back, to World War I, but to her surprise she found out that the bulk of the medical reports from the war were disposed of in the mid-1920s leaving very little official material from which to work.