The Quick and The Dead

The polar opposite, Medicine (Primum non nocere First, do no harm), paradoxically, learned much, and in the case of surgery, probably almost everything, from conflict and war. Surgeons such as Ambroise Paré, Dominique Jean Larrey, William Beatty and Archibald McIndoe improved the lot of those for whom they cared, and left a legacy for those that would follow. So much has been written about The Great War, that it is difficult to imagine a perspective that might provide a fresh insight into the carnage. Professor Hedley-Whyte’s historical review, ‘Blood and War’ achieves just that, and explores the relationship between the two, and the life-giving restorative of blood transfusions: liquid life among the haemorrhaging dead. The Journal wishes to thank Harvard University, the Rockefeller University, Johns Hopkins University, the Library of Congress, the Smithsonian Institution, and the Imperial War Museum for the hard work of their archivists and curators of art, as well as the trustees of the Evergreen Museum affiliated with Johns Hopkins University.