World War I
World War I was a miserable and bloody affair. The American armed forces suffered numerous injuries and countless deaths. When the United States first entered the war in 1917, perhaps the biggest fault was the fact that the army did not have an established medical corps. However, as the war progressed, the army copied parts of both the French and English medical systems, that arranged medical staff in a particular, but effective manner. Stretcher-bearers came first, moving the wounded soldiers from trenches to waiting ambulances. Motorized transportation was by far the fastest way to get injured soldiers to where they needed to be. Ambulances rushed them to mobile dressing stations or field hospitals and depending on the severity of the injuries, many soldiers were taken to base hospitals far behind the lines of battle. The image below depicts the route of the injured soldiers from the line of battle, to base hospitals.
In the fifty year span from the American Civil War to World War I, military medicine had not changed much. The First World War has traditionally been viewed as having a positive impact on medicine. There were new developments in orthopedics, neurosurgery and psychiatry, all which were later used to treat civilians. Wartime serves as a great education tool for doctors, as it gives them the opportunity to develop and practice news ways to treat injuries. During World War I doctors were able to experiment with new procedures that treated cases of tissue damage, burns and contagious disease. Additionally, doctors began using X-ray equipment to locate bullets and shrapnel during operations and blood transfusions were given under battlefield conditions. In fact, World War I saw the first blood bank on the Western Front in 1917, established by US Army doctor, Captain Oswald Robertson. Robertson, who appreciated the British Army routine of using blood transfusion in treating wounded soldiers, realized the need to stockpile blood before the injuries and casualties arrived. Faced with challenge of countless and injuries that needed treating, new equipment and techniques were invented that, across four years of fighting, would end up saving thousands of lives.