This book explores Irish experiences of medicine and health during the First and Second World Wars, the War of Independence and the Civil War. It examines the physical, mental and emotional impact of conflict on Irish political and social life, as well as medical, scientific and official interventions in Irish health matters. The contributors put forward the case that warfare and political unrest profoundly shaped Irish experiences of medicine and health, and that Irish political, social and economic contexts added unique contours to those experiences not evident in other countries. In pursuing these themes, the book offers an original and focused intervention into a central, but so far unexplored, area of Irish medical history.

Introduction - David Durnin and Ian Miller
Part I: Health and disease on the domestic front
1. 'Every human life is a national importance': the impact of the First World War on attitudes to maternal and infant health - Fionnuala Walsh
2. The war and influenza: the impact of the First World War on the 1918-19 influenza pandemic in Ulster - Patricia Marsh
3. Food, the Emergency and the lower-class Irish body, c.1939-45 - Bryce Evans
4. Alone among neutrals: Ireland's unique experience of tuberculosis during the Second World War - Anne Mac Lellan
Part II: Health and political unrest
5. War on our doorstep: Temple Street Hospital and the 1916 Rising - Barry Kennerk
6. Ireland's British Army doctors and the treatment of Irish nationalists, 1916-23 - David Durnin
7. The 'report of a nightmare': hallucinating conflict in the political and personal frontiers of Ulster during the IRA border campaign of 1920-22 - Fiachra Byrne
Part III: Institutions and medical personnel
8. From front to home and back again: geographical networks of auxiliary medical care in the First World War - Ronan Foley
9. Hope and experience: nurses from Belfast hospitals in the First World War - Seán Graffin
10. War work on the home front: the Central Sphagnum Depot for Ireland at the Royal College of Science for Ireland, 1915-19 - Clara Cullen
11. On the brink of universalism: the Emergency Hospital Services in Second World War Northern Ireland - Seán Lucey
12. Imperial continuities: Irish doctors and the British armed forces, 1922-45 - Steven O'Connor
13. Migrants, medics, matrons: exploring the spectrum of Irish immigrants in the wartime British health sector - Jennifer Redmond
Index

Editors

David Durnin is Irish Research Council Doctoral Scholar at the Centre for the History of Medicine in Ireland, School of History, University College Dublin

Ian Miller is Wellcome Trust Research Fellow at the Centre for the History of Medicine in Ireland, Ulster University