L'histoire médicale de la Première Guerre Mondiale

The Medical History of the First World War in Europe

17^th-18^th October, 2013
University of Leeds, Leeds, UK

The medical history of the First World War has often been written within national parameters.  As Leo van Bergen has pointed out, this has led to a skewing of perspective in the medical historiography as ‘More has been published about the British and their Great War than about the French, Belgians or Germans.’  Van Bergen’s own work is among the few to have attempted to tackle the medical history of the war in terms of the recent trend towards transnational history in First World War studies.

This workshop aims to begin to fill this gap in the historiography of the First World War.  By bringing together scholars working on aspects of medical history and the war across Europe, it presents an opportunity to explore transnational relationships within medical history of the period, as well as develop deeper comparative understandings of national histories.  It is intended that the workshop will lay the foundations for a network of researchers examining a range of topics relating to the history of medicine and warfare across Europe.  These may include, but are not limited to, developments in the treatment of wounds and disease; the role and status of medical services, both military and voluntary; the gendering of medical care in wartime and questions of women’s service; cultural representations of disease, wounding and medical care; the impact of war on civilian medical care; civil and military sanitation; and disability, rehabilitation and long-term medical care.

The workshop will run for a day and a half and will be co-hosted by the Centre for Medical Humanities and the Brotherton Library Special Collections at the University of Leeds.  It will include presentations from scholars from across Europe and North America on their current research in the field, as well as a session designed to introduce scholars to the archival resources available in Leeds, including the Liddle Collection, a renowned collection of papers and artefacts relating to Britain and the war, the Bamji Collection of books and material relating both to medico-military history and the holdings of the Museum of the History of Science, Technology and Medicine and the Thackray Museum.

Programme

Thursday, 17^th October, 2013
Centre for Medical Humanities
9:00     Registration
9:45     Welcome – Jessica Meyer
10:00   Wounds and Wounding

• Sophie Delaporte (University of Picardie Jules Verne): Title TBC
• Fiona Reid (University of Glamorgan): Wounded Men: the battle-stained hero, the cheery chap and ‘base fellows’.
• Bérangère Soustre de Condat (Université d’Aix-Marseille): L’arme terrible. Evolution of weapons, wounding, wounds, ballistics and forensics during the First World War (France, Great Britain).

11:30   Coffee
12:00   Caregiving

• Emily Mayhew (Imperial College London): Transforming the Battlefield:   the creation and operation of a  specialist stretcher bearer corps on the Western Front.
• Christine Van Everbroeck (Royal Museum of the Armed Forces and of Military History, Brussels): War-related psychiatric distress in the Belgian army during the First World War.
• David Durnin (University College Dublin): ‘A Slack Response’?: The Irish Medical Profession and the First World War

1:30     Lunch
2:30     Aftermath

• Ana Carden Coyne (University of Manchester): Title TBC
• Wendy Gagen (Independent Scholar): Rehabilitating the Disabled Male Body in Britain
• Felicita Ratti (Independent Scholar): Rewriting the history of the Spanish Influenza pandemic

4:00     Tea
4:30     Cultural Intersections

• Alison Fell (University of Leeds): Interdisciplinary approaches to the study of First World War nursing
• Sara Haslam (The Open University): Alcohol and the First World War

5:30     Session ends
6:30     Workshop Dinner (Venue TBC)

Friday, 18^th October, 2013
Brotherton Room, Special Collections, Brotherton Library
9:30     Archives at Leeds

• Richard High (Special Collections)
• Claire Jones (Museum of the History of Science, Technology and Medicine)
• Lauren Ryall-Stockton (Thackray Museum)

11:00   Coffee
11:30   Round Table: The medical history of the First World War in the centenary years
1:00     Workshop ends