Military Medicine

by

Sarah Handley-Cousins

• LAST MODIFIED: 17 April 2025
• DOI: 10.1093/obo/9780197768723-0045

Introduction

War creates the perfect setting for health crises. Militaries are ideal disease vectors, transporting germs to new lands and vulnerable people both in and out of uniform. Soldiers living in close quarters and poor conditions, from ancient wars to modern conflicts, have suffered from diarrheal diseases, skin infections, and infectious diseases. Wars have created public health problems, from the Plague of Athens in the early fifth century BCE to the spread of sexually transmitted infections during the 20th-century world wars. Seizing the opportunity for research, physicians tackled long-standing public health crises—such as yellow fever in late-19th-century Cuba—as militaries worked to protect their fighting forces. Soldiers, contractually obligated to their governments, also make convenient test subjects, and doctors have used these bodies to shape ideas about intelligence, racial categorization, and preferential physiques. Such studies, performed on the bodies of soldiers, helped to spur mainline acceptance of eugenics and race science. As military technology advanced, so did the damage that weapons created, evidenced by the devastating wounds inflicted by minié balls during the US Civil War, the lower-body injuries of improvised explosive devices, and debilitating stress ailments of drone operators. Yet, however destructive, wars have also acted as catalysts for medical advancement, serving as bloody training grounds for anatomical study, the development of surgical techniques and treatments, and the development of professional standards. Damage caused by combat does not resolve when war ends, leaving disabled veterans and civilians to fight for recognition and government support. The history of military medicine has not always been distinct from the history of medicine, but rather is deeply intertwined with it. In the early twentieth century, as the history of medicine emerged as a profession, military medicine as a subfield began to appear as Fielding Garrison, the first president of the Association for the History of Medicine, delivered a series of lectures at the Carlisle Barracks that later became the core of his Notes on the History of Military Medicine (cited under General Overviews). Yet distinct histories of military medicine were slow to emerge. Today, many useful histories exist, written by clinician-historians, veterans, and historians. In recent years, the field has broadened to include the experiences of women practitioners and disabled veterans.

General Overviews

The volumes in this section present general introductions and overviews of military medicine. Garrison 1922 is the first modern book in the field, making up part of the foundations of the field of the history of medicine. Gabriel 2013 is an updated version, offering a detailed survey that is particularly useful for those looking for an introduction to the broad field, particularly for teaching. Soon 2023 provides an introduction to historiographical discussions of military medicine in Japan and China. Fazal 2024 adds an important dimension of political history in an exploration of the many long-term costs of warfare in US history. While many histories consider injuries and diseases together, McCallum 2023 provides a more focused but very useful overview of medical response to epidemics in the United States military.

• Fazal, Tanisha M. Military Medicine and the Hidden Costs of War. New York: Oxford University Press, 2024.

  DOI: 10.1093/oso/9780190057473.001.0001

  A rebuttal to Steven Pinker’s argument that war is declining in the modern world, Fazal’s text is an exploration of the long-term costs of war even as modern medicine means fewer fatalities.

• Gabriel, Richard A. Between Flesh and Steel: A History of Military Medicine from the Middle Ages to the War in Afghanistan. Washington, DC: Potomac Books, 2013.

  A clear and accessible introduction to the broad sweep of military medicine. Focuses almost entirely on the Western world, making this text less useful to those seeking histories of African, Asian, or Middle Eastern medical traditions. Particularly useful for teaching.

• Garrison, Fielding H. Notes on the History of Military Medicine. Washington, DC: Association of Military Surgeons, 1922.

  Though dated, this classic study by one of the founders of the American Association for the History of Medicine traces military medicine in the Western world from the ancient Mediterranean to the World War I, while offering a glimpse into medical attitudes of the early twentieth century.

• McCallum, Jack E. Epidemics and the American Military. Annapolis, MD: US Naval Institute Press, 2023.

  A close study of infectious disease in US military history.

• Soon, Wayne. “Military Medicine in East Asia: Histories of Instrumentalism, Resistance, and Agency.” East Asian Science, Technology, and Society 17 (2023): 222–231.

  DOI: 10.1080/18752160.2023.2186604

  A historiography of military medicine in Japan and China between the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries.