War and the Militarization of British Army Medicine, 1793–1830

---

Catherine Kelly

Studies for the Society for the Social History of Medicine

During the French Revolutionary and Napoleonic Wars, British doctors travelled in unprecedented numbers to foreign locations where they were confronted with battlefield injuries, virulent and mysterious diseases, and complex military politics that few had encountered before. Drawing on rare manuscript sources, Kelly examines how nearly twenty-five years of sustained warfare affected the professional identity embraced by those doctors and thoroughly militarized their approach to medicine. This study demonstrates the emergence of the ‘military medical officer’ and places their work within the broader context of changes to British medicine during the first half of the nineteenth century.

Sample pages

• Introduction
• Index

Readership

History of Medicine and Science, Military History, British History

Contents

Introduction
1 The Low Countries and the West Indies
2 Walcheren and the Army Medical Board
3 Egypt, Ophthalmia and Plague
4 The Peninsula War
5 James McGrigor in the Peninsula
6 Beyond the Wars
Conclusion

Related titles

• Arming the Royal Navy, 1793–1815: The Office of Ordnance and the State
• Locating Health: Historical and Anthropological Investigations of Place and Health
• Medicine in the Remote and Rural North, 1800–2000
• Military Economics, Culture and Logistics in the Burma Campaign, 1942–1945
• Military Manpower, Armies and Warfare in South Asia
• A Modern History of the Stomach: Gastric Illness, Medicine and British Society, 1800–1950

Return to top

• 
• 
• 
• 
• 
• 
•