Lee K. Pennington, Casualties of History: Wounded Japanese Servicemen and the Second World War (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2015), pp. iix, 282, $39.95, hardback, ISBN: 978-0-8014-5257-4.

led him to investigate a wide variety of topics with an analytical and practical focus, and to publish his results. In Spanish he published a dozen studies about different aspects of the storage of blood, and in 1937 he published in English in the The Lancet the method he had developed in Barcelona. This interest never diminished throughout his life. Indeed, his last study was published in the Nature in June 1957, three months after his death. His achievements are particularly impressive given the rather inconspicuous Spanish contribution to science in the first half of the twentieth century. But in Dr Palfreeman’s book other important contributors to blood transfusion in Spain during the Civil War are recognised. One of them was the Canadian surgeon Norman Bethune. After his arrival in Spain in November 1936 he visited the Barcelona Blood Transfusion Service and there he knew the method developed by Duran Jordà and decided to create a similar organisation in Madrid. His work in Spain was very well known in English-speaking countries thanks to his very active presence in the media supported by the Spanish Government that had already identified the importance of propaganda in getting the support of the international community. Norman Bethune was in Spain until the end of May 1937 but in just those six months, according to Dr Palfreeman, he made a ‘contribution of monumental proportions’ to the Republican Blood Transfusion Service. Another important contributor to blood transfusion during the Spanish Civil War is deservedly recognised in the book, Dr Carlos Elósegui Sarasola. He was the creator of the Blood Transfusion Service in the Francoist army and after the Civil War he continued as a director of the Haematology and Haemotherapy Institute, the first civil haemotherapy organisation created in Europe to meet the blood transfusion needs of an entire nation. In summary, the book provides an informed, thorough and informative review of the development of battlefield blood transfusion during the Spanish Civil War. The writing is clear and readable and will meet the expectations of scholars in their research as well as those of general readers interested in blood transfusion or Spanish Civil War history.