San Antonio College Library

Wounds and disease were as devastating on the battlefields of the ancient world as they are today. How did physicians and medics cope with arrow injuries, spear and sword gashes, dysentery, and infection without the benefits of anesthesia or modern medical technology? In this compelling volume, military historian Richard A. Gabriel explores the long-hidden world of ancient military medicine from 4000 BCE to 1453 CE to reveal its surprisingly sophisticated...

Over the last five centuries, the development of modern weapons and warfare has created an entirely new set of challenges for practitioners in the field of military medicine. Here is traced the historical development of military medicine from the Middle Ages to modern times. It focuses on three key elements: the modifications in warfare and weapons whose increased killing power radically changed the medical challenges that battle surgeons faced in...

An analysis of medical ethics during war and the inherent conflict between the principles of bioethics and the morally legitimate but competing demands of military necessity.

From Dust Jacket: The proud tradition of caring for wounded American fighting forces goes back to the founding of our nation. Advances in medical knowledge, equipment, training, and evolving military doctrine do not change one thing: there must be medical personnel ready to care for their fallen comrades. From Yorktown to Gettysburg, at Belleau Wood and Midway, in the freezing Korean winters and the sweltering jungles of Vietnam, our military medical...

" There is growing alarm over how drugs increasingly empower terrorists, insurgents, traffickers, and gangs. But by looking back not just years and decades but centuries, Peter Andreas reveals that the drugs-conflict nexus is actually an old story, and that powerful states have been its biggest beneficiaries. In his path-breaking Killer High, Andreas shows how six psychoactive drugs--ranging from old to relatively new, mild to potent, licit to illicit,...

War has always been a dangerous business, bringing injury, wounds, and death, and--until recently--often disease. What has changed over time, most dramatically in the last 150 or so years, is the care these casualties receive and who provides it. Medical services have become highly organized and are state sponsored. Diseases are now prevented through vaccination and good sanitation. Sedation now ameliorates pain, and antibiotics combat infection....

Out of the How the U.S. Military Transformed Combat Casualty Care in Iraq and Afghanistan edited by Arthur L. Kellermann, MD and MPH, and Eric Elster, MD is now available by the US Army, Borden Institute. This comprehensive resource, part of the renowned Textbooks of Military Medicine series , documents one of the most extraordinary achievements in the history of American medicine - the dramatic advances in combat casualty care developed during Operations...

Twenty years ago, the most common cause of death for medical humanitarians and other aid workers was traffic accidents; today, it is violent attacks. And the death of each doctor, nurse, paramedic, midwife, and vaccinator is multiplied untold times in the vulnerable populations deprived of their care. In a 2005 report, the ICRC found that for every soldier killed in the war in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, more than 60 civilians died due to...