A NEW exhibition looking at Scottish innovations in medicine made during wartime has gone on display in Aberdeen.
The display explores the paradox of medicine in wartime: that although it is conducted in the surgical theatre of war – an environment of devastation and death – it is in these abhorrent circumstances that advances in medical science can often take place.
The exhibition, which is on display at Aberdeen University’s Sir Duncan Rice Library library, tells the various stories of a small group of doctors, surgeons and nurses associated with Aberdeen who used medicine in wartime with courage and innovation.
Their journals, letters, instruments and inventions from the university’s special collections and museum collections evoke a period in military medical history that was challenging and ripe for change.
The exhibition includes case notes of surgeon Robert Wilson, who performed operations on injured servicemen before the availability of anaesthetic, and the first first aid guide for soldiers by Surgeon Major Peter Shepherd, published posthumously, highlighting the challenging medical conditions of conflicts in the early 1800s.
In later years, an understanding of hygiene, bacteriology and antiseptic surgery by innovators such as James McGrigor, Alexander Ogston and Henry Gray helped dramatically in improving the survival rate of the British armed forces.
The bravery of battlefield medics was matched by the selflessness of medical inventors like James Mackenzie Davidson, whose research in the dangerous field of radiography gave military and civilian surgeons new devices to use in the treatment of the wounded.
Non-surgical practices were also given trials in wartime. War provided the opportunity for the development of Amelia Laws’s use of massage, and a system of nutritional health in rationing that was devised by John Boyd Orr and practised in a unique way as a prisoner of war by David Lubbock.
All feature in the the exhibition, which also includes a series of works on paper by the artist Julia Midgley, whose project Art, War and Surgery document surgeons in training and service personnel working to recover from injuries sustained in more recent conflicts in Afghanistan and Iraq.
The exhibition is accompanied by a series of talks about the individuals featured, including a guest talk by Midgley. Retired orthopaedic surgeon and military historian Tom Scotland will be giving a talk, on “Henry Gray, Surgeon of the Great War: Saving Lives in a Theatre of Destruction” next month.
Jen Shaw, exhibition officer at the University of Aberdeen, said: “Medicine in Wartime: Aberdeen’s Medical Innovators offers a fascinating insight into what life was like for those working in medicine during war times.
“It is hard to imagine just how horrific the conditions would have been, but this exhibition really provides a unique insight from those actually living and working in the direst of circumstances.”
Medicine in Wartime: Aberdeen’s Medical Innovators runs until March 18.
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