Preliminary Programme

Within months of the outbreak of the Great War in 1914, Medical Officers in the British Army became aware of serious outbreaks of meningitis in the camps where young recruits were gathered before their dispatch to the front, and cases also became a problem on the battlefields. A programme of laboratory and field research was urgently put together, comprising a central laboratory in London and 50 regional laboratories in England, Ireland, Scotland, and Wales, supported by a mobile field laboratory for emergencies, and employing a team of some 20 researchers at various times, directed by an experienced microbiologist co-opted from civilian service. The mechanisms of infection in meningitis had been recognised by 1908, but knowledge of the environmental conditions engendering outbreaks, known in the 1850s, had been lost. Using laboratory techniques, statistical methods and field observation, the team recovered this knowledge and established it with a new scientific precision. This paper explores the workings of this very special wartime research programme, perhaps the first collective, targeted microbiological research project, including the personnel and techniques it used, its contribution to the scientific understanding of meningitis as an infection, and discovery of the means of preventing its spread. (Show less)

Between 1960 and 1996, Guatemala experienced a bloody Civil War between the Guatemalan Government and various leftist Guerrilla groups. During this so called internal armed conflict, over 200.000 men, women and children, mostly from ethnic Mayan indigenous groups, died or disappeared. Many others fled the country, especially in the early 1980s when the military government under Efraín Ríos Montt applied a cruel genocidal 'scorched earth' campaign against the Mayan population in the Guatemalan highlands, ruining crops, fouling water supplies and destroying entire villages after the killings of their habitants.
In this climate of political repression, racism and violence, health and medicine turned into highly politicized topics and into a field of activity of many different actors - from leftist medical students of the public university, religious groups, international health experts up to the Guatemalan military. Thus, in light of the Cold War, improving health and living conditions was considered to be the keystone of national security and progress. In order to prevent a "workers-and-peasant revolution" and to bring Guatemala into 'modernity', US American experts and Guatemalan military officials promoted health projects and family planning programs since the 1960s. New health projects, for instance those within the "Civic Action" program, were initiated by the Guatemalan military to address mostly isolated, rural and multiethnic areas. These initiatives not only competed with other health programs, but also clashed with local medical practices and non-western knowledge of health and healing.
This paper aims to take a close look at the interplays between health and warfare in the context of the Guatemalan Civil War. By focussing on the different actors, their health projects and struggles over medical authority, the paper will disclose how medical practices functioned as instruments of power to control the minds and, especially the bodies, of the rural population.
This paper is related to my doctoral thesis which examines the role that Guatemalan medical actors played in the production and circulation of 'westernized' knowledge of health, family planning, and population growth. It draws on a wide variety of published and archival material from US-American and Guatemalan Archives, including correspondence papers, field diaries and reports written by development agents, public health officials, and population experts. (Show less)

Physicians in the mid-nineteenth century United States accorded great power to the environment in the causation of disease. During the American Civil war, confederates were sure that the disease environment of the south, to which they were seasoned and the Yankees were vulnerable, would repel invaders from their sacred soil. Further, that environment, through its natural flora, would provide effective medications to replace those limited by the northern blockade. Both sides launched massive educational campaigns to teach newly-minted officers how to build hygienic camps for neophyte soldiers. In describing the high mortality rates of POW camps north and south, both sides accused the other of building a hostile environment with the deliberate intention of creating a killing place. In an era that closely linked disease to environment, the understanding of environmental manipulation as weapon and preventive tool permeated the medical discourse in this deadly and prolonged conflict. (Show less)

Early modern warfare put serious pressure on both rural and urban health environments. Troops marching through the landscape, billeting in large numbers, and the formation of field hospitals all facilitated the spread of infectious diseases. The military, civilian authorities and the population were all well aware of these dangers and developed strategies to prevent the spread of diseases. Sanitary measures to improve hygienic standards or separation of patients suffering from infectious diseases were suggested for camps, hospitals and towns, while army medical staff and civilian authorities were charged with monitoring the health of both the military and civilian populations.
This paper discusses to what extent such measures were actually put into practice to improve the health environment during wartime. Using examples from eighteenth-century Northern Germany, I will show that the measures and treatments prescribed in military manuals, medical textbooks and official regulations were used to prevent the spread of infectious diseases. However, based on archival material I will argue that operational constraints, limited resources and economic considerations often overrode public health concerns and individual fear of infection.
(Show less)