During World War I, there were many issues that surrounded the health of troops. The lack of medical advancement and the knowledge of it, then the struggle of keeping ones self-healthy throughout combat were key points to survival. During World War I in less than a year, American troops suffered more than 318,000 injuries 120,000 were counted as casualties. The front line soldiers are always at the highest risk in any war. With World War I though, trench warfare was a dangerous place to be considering they were always at risk for disease or infection because they were in the poorest conditions.
During World War I, the Black Plague was one of the most drastic plagues in history. The troops would try anything and everything to help the disease not run like a wild fire. Soldiers would use herbs to blow away bad smells of the sewer and clean the contaminated air. During the war, soldiers would let blood run out of their bodies and it was to get rid of the common cold and drain out other harmful infections. If bleeding out bad wounds was not enough they would have to amputate, and this was a very common practice as well.
During World War I, diseases spread throughout the camps such as small pox and malaria. Infections during the Civil War were the most common thing people died from more than actual combat. Just like the Civil War, during World War I most of the casualties were because of disease and the illnesses more so than the actual fighting. The men and women fighting in the war had a very difficult time keeping health and hygiene at a high standard. In World War I, many soldiers died from typhoid fever, trench foot, and influenza. Typhoid fever is an illness that comes with a fever caused by the
Salmonella bacteria. If you caught the bacteria early enough you could possibly live form it, but once the bacteria entered the intestines and it started to make ulcers that would bleed from inside the intestines of the victim, the chances of living slimmed tremendously. Disease could lead to holes in the intestines, and the bacteria can infiltrate the bloodstream and often spread to other important parts of the body like the spinal cord causing meningitis. Once the bacteria entered the blood stream, the victim would become septic, and chances of survival drastically decrease.
The disease is caught from drinking contaminated water or eating infected food. The fever would not show any signs for about three to four weeks, and the symptoms come with poor appetite, diarrhea, and a fever or 104 degrees. This is the reason they called it Typhoid fever, because of the high temperature changes in the body. The disease would be treated with antibiotics and after the illness would be dormant for some time but 3%-5% of soldiers would still carry the bacteria around without knowing it.
Dying from Typhoid fever was not the best way to die; this is why people were encouraged to wash their hands after using the latrine and before handling food. Typhoid fever was nowhere near as deadly as some of the other dieses, only thirty percent of people who were infected with Typhoid fever died. Trench foot is another condition that was a disaster during the war. Trench foot is a fungal infection caused by the feet being over exposed to damp conditions. Trench foot gets the name from World War I trench warfare, in which the soldiers were constantly in wet and damp conditions.
The fungus was caused from sweating, cold, and wet feet not being treated properly and not being taken care of, like changing socks and keeping the feet dry. The symptoms would include the feet slowly going numb and the skin changing to dark or red colors while also rotting off toes and leaving holes in the feet. Amputation was the only treatment for trench foot, it was the only way to rid the body of the fungus. During 1914-1915, over 20,000 men were diagnosed with trench foot.
The only way for he men to fight the fungus was to change socks multiple times a day. The soldiers would eventually carry around three pairs of socks with them, and they also were drying their feet every chance they got; the soldiers would also cover their feet in grease to help with the problem. Another impactful infections during World War I was Influenza it is a viral infection and is commonly mistaken for the flu. Influenza also known as Spanish Flu or La Grippe killed around 40 million people during the war; Influenza killed more people than the actual war did.
The symptoms of influenza are sore throat, headache and blood poisoning. One can catch the disease from touching a surface that has the flu virus on it and then transferring it to the mouth or an open wound. The disease was also very dangerous because it became airborne during the war meaning anyone could get it. The disease infects the respiratory system and moving throughout the body to eventually turn into pneumonia. A patient that was infected could affect anyone around them with just a cough or just by regular breathing.
Fruit juice was used to help eliminate the disease in the kidneys and skin. Patients would drink liters of water to clean out their system in the hopes of removing all the pathogens. Once the disease got in the body, the survival rate went down tremendously, the average life span of an infected person was three days. It was basically luck of the draw if you were infected or not. This disease affected both sides of the war; for a whole year, it took the average life span of the United States down by ten years.
During the pandemic, doctors recommended everyone to stay indoors and not leave unless of an emergency and have the least amount of physical contact as possible: people were scared to live their daily lives. Another unhealthy infection during this time was Gangrene. Gangrene was caught from being on French soil and the excessive amount of horse manure. The soldiers would catch it also through the mud in the trenches and it would become attached to an open wound. Gangrene is when body tissue dies from a loss of blood and oxygen due to an illness or injury.
Gangrene is bacteria that can spread quickly if not properly treated; the symptoms include dry skin, cold or numb skin, and thick yellow puss pouring out of the would. The only way to treat these bacterial infections is to amputate it, and then the healing process can start, but during the healing process infection can get in the open wound and it starts the process all over again this is why so many people died from infection. A lot of diseases that were most dangerous during this time were not always from a wound. Sexual Transmitted Disease was also a very serious disease during this time.
More than 10,000 men were discharged during this time because of an STD. The reason this affected so many people is because penicillin did not kick in till around 1940s. Penicillin did not go into affect until after World War II. Syphilis was also very dangerous disease during this time it would take three weeks to develop from when contact what required. The symptom would include an ulcer on the skin at contact the disease then passes though three stages first outbreak in sores, second being the rash on the skin, and third nervous disorders also with swelling on glands.
This disease was deadly because it attacked the heart, brain, and other main organs while also being passed through generations without medical attention. During this time frame if a disease or bacteria could not be taken care of with antibiotics or antiviral medicine, the doctors of the military would do a procedure called amputation. Amputations were commonly used in the medical field and it was used to take away limbs if they were damaged beyond repair. Thirty-five percent of people who had the procedure of amputating a limb did not survive.
Over 1. 5 million men were wounded during the World War I, 240,000 soldiers suffered amputations. The bullets were made of lead balls and when it hits its target it shatters bones while taking large chunks of flesh and muscle out. The only way to stop the infection from spreading was to remove the whole limb before gangrene took its toll. Also during this time, there is no anesthesia so soldiers would drink whiskey in hopes on becoming drunk enough to not feel the surgery. The doctors would make the soldier bite on a towel and also use herbs to numb the brain and hopes to block the pain receptors.
After the limb was amputated infection could still set in from the surgery where the doctors reused tools without sanitation. The surgeons would also put prosthetics in the place of the limb to help the soldier regain normal life as much as possible. Prosthetics were also used during this time but they were not very efficient being very heavy and showing a lot of discomfort. The prosthetics would break and were very expensive to repair. Medical practice or lack there of during this time plays a big role in shaping the loss of life to both sides during World War I.
Doctors and nurses did not have the capability to fight infection like Influenza, trench foot, gangrene, and Typhoid fever. The knowledge just was not present, the infections that presented themselves during this time only tallied up the up the deaths during World War I and even before the war they racked up more deaths. The drastic jump we have made in the medical field has only helped in warfare and back home; we are now striving more and more every day to prevent diseases and infections from destroying our daily lives.
In conclusion, the medical field during this time was nothing less than pain and agony for anyone who had an illness. The way the patients were handled with unsanitary items and the doctors how they would spread disease from soldier to soldier ravished through the camps. As the nation continued to send young men to fight overseas other soldiers that had been wounded were coming home. This is just some of the issues of medicine in World War I.
