LESSON 1
INTRODUCTION TO MILITARY MEDICINE
Section I. BACKGROUND
1-1.
INTRODUCTION
Just what is "military" medicine? Military medicine embraces all of professional
medicine, including its specialties, and employs it in the military situation. It applies the
science and art of medicine to large, controlled groups of military forces. While the
patients treated, the diseases suffered, and even the injuries sustained are the same or
quite similar to those met in the civilian community, the environment in which
military medicine is practiced differs from that of civilian practice. That different
environment--close association of large groups, rapid change of climate, stresses of
war, separation from family, contact with diseases for which immunity is not built-up
presents special medical problems which the AMEDD must solve.
1-2.
BRIEF HISTORY OF MILITARY MEDICINE
Military medicine is as old as armies. It is probable that battle injuries were the
first to be treated by rational methods instead of by magic incantation or theological
superstition. Thus, many historians consider the early military surgeons to be fathers of
medical science.
a. European Military Medicine. United States (US) Army medicine owes much
to the practice of medicine in European armies. The legions of the Roman Empire had
physicians attached to each column and camp and the Roman soldier was equipped for
medical self-aid. In the fifteenth century, the Spanish army had field hospitals and an
ambulance service. France, in 1718, was the first nation to establish a training school
for medical officers and soon after began giving medical examinations to recruits. By
mid-century, France had established a system of military hospitals comprised of "fixed,
sedentary, and "ambulant" hospitals. A system of evacuating wounded French soldiers
from the battlefield was designed by Baron Larrey, Napoleon's chief medical officer,
around 1800. The importance of French military medicine can be seen in the US
AMEDD. During the American Civil War, Dr. Johnathan Letterman developed a plan to
evacuate wounded Union soldiers based upon the system used by Larrey. The
principles of the French evacuation system and the fixed, semi-mobile, and mobile
hospital system are still being used
b. Early American Military Medicine. The US AMEDD, known then as the
"hospital," was first established by congress upon the request of General George
Washington, Commander-in-chief of the Colonial Army, on July 27, 1775. Twice--once
after the Revolutionary War and again after the war of 1812--the Department was
deactivated and physicians were assigned to troop units with no centralized medical
direction or control. In 1818, the AMEDD was permanently established as an agency of
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