Bøger af Linda Palfreeman

The Friends' Ambulance Unit (FAU) was created shortly after the outbreak of war. The idea of the unit's founder, Philip J. Baker, was that it would provide young Friends (Quakers) with the opportunity to serve their country without sacrificing their pacifist principles. The first volunteers went to Belgium on 31 October 1914, under the auspices of the Joint War Committee of the British Red Cross Society and the Order of St John of Jerusalem. The FAU made a sustained contribution to the military medical services of the Allied nations, establishing military hospitals, running ambulance convoys, and staffing hospital ships and ambulance trains, treating and transporting wounded men. Determined to bring succour to all those in need, the FAU also assisted civilians trapped in the war zone and living in desperate circumstances. Nowhere was this more acute than in the besieged and battered town of Ypres where thousands sheltered in the underground passage-ways of the towns ancientfortifications -- a subte

Research into local aspects of the Spanish Civil War and of the International Brigades' Medical Service resulted in an informal trilogy of sorts. ¡Salud! British Volunteers in the Republican Medical Service during the Spanish Civil War, 1936--1939 and Aristocrats, Adventurers and Ambulances: British Medical Units in the Spanish Civil War preceded the final book Spain Bleeds , which provides long-unavailable information on health care and medical assistance during wartime. War is sometimes mistakenly construed as the chief impetus for medical innovation. Nevertheless, military conflict obliges the implementation of discoveries still at an experimental stage. Such was the case with the practice of blood transfusion during the Spanish Civil War, when massive demand for blood provoked immediate recourse to breakthroughs in transfusion medicine not yet integrated into standard medical practice. The Spanish Civil War marked a new era in blood transfusion medicine. From humble beginnings at the outbreak of war, the blood transfusion services that were created in Spain later became crucial in the treatment of casualties during the Second World War and shaped the future evolution of blood transfusion medicine throughout the developed world.