Healing the nation
Soldiers and the culture of caregiving in Britain during the Great War
By Jeffrey Reznick
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- Format: Hardcover
- ISBN: 978-0-7190-6974-1
- Pages: 192
- Price: £85.00
- Published Date: January 2005
- Series: Cultural History of Modern War
Description
Healing the Nation is a study of caregiving during the Great War, exploring life behind the lines for ordinary British soldiers who served on the Western Front. Using a variety of literary, artistic, and architectural evidence, this study draws connections between the war machine and the wartime culture of caregiving: the product of medical knowledge and procedure, social relationships and health institutions that informed experiences of rest, recovery and rehabilitation in sites administered by military and voluntary-aid authorities.
Rest huts, hospitals, and rehabilitation centres served not only as means to sustain manpower and support for the war but also as distinctive sites where soldiers, their caregivers and the public attempted to make sense of the conflict and the unprecedented change it wrought. Revealing aspects of wartime life that have received little attention, this study shows that Britain's 'generation of 1914' was a group bound as much by a comradeship of healing as by a comradeship of the trenches.
The author has used an extensive collection of illustrations in his discussion, and the book will make fascinating reading for students and specialists in the history of war, medicine and gender studies.
Contents
List of figures
Preface
1. Soldiers and the culture of caregiving in Britain during the Great War
2. Homes away from home: Rest huts and war-weary soldiers
3. Havens for heroes: Life in two military hospitals
4. Hospital magazines: Writing about wartime recovery/recovering writing about wartime
5. Wartime convalescence: The case of the convalescent blues
6. Reclaiming the maimed at Shepherd's Bush Military Hospital, London
7. Conclusion: Memories, legacies and landmarks
Select bibliography
Index
Author
Jeffrey S. Reznick is an Honorary Research Fellow in the Department of Modern History of the University of Birmingham, a member of Birmingham's Centre for First World War Studies and a Fellow of the Royal Historical Society. [for the dust jacket]: Jeffrey S. Reznick is Executive Director and Senior Research Fellow of the Orthotic and Prosthetic Assistance Fund. A native of Rochester, New York, he received his undergraduate education at the University of Rochester.