Healing the nation
Soldiers and the culture of caregiving in Britain during the Great War
Healing the nation is a study of caregiving during the Great War, exploring life behind the lines for ordinary British soldiers who served on the Western Front. Using a variety of literary, artistic, and architectural evidence, this study draws connections between the war machine and the wartime culture of caregiving: the product of medical knowledge and procedure, social relationships and health institutions that informed experiences of rest, recovery and rehabilitation in sites administered by military and voluntary-aid authorities. Rest huts, hospitals, and rehabilitation centres served not only as means to sustain manpower and support for the war but also as distinctive sites where soldiers, their caregivers and the public attempted to make sense of the conflict and the unprecedented change it wrought. Revealing aspects of wartime life that have received little attention, this study shows that Britain's 'generation of 1914' was a group bound as much by a comradeship of healing as by a comradeship of the trenches. The author has used an extensive collection of illustrations in his discussion, and the book will make fascinating reading for students and specialists in the history of war, medicine and gender studies. -- .
Jeffrey S. Reznick is Deputy Chief of the History of Medicine Division at the U.S. National Library of Medicine, a member of Birmingham’s Centre for First World War Studies and a Fellow of the Royal Historical Society. [for the dust jacket]: Jeffrey S. Reznick is Executive Director and Senior Research Fellow of the Orthotic and Prosthetic Assistance Fund. A native of Rochester, New York, he received his undergraduate education at the University of Rochester and holds a doctorate in history from Emory University. He lives in Washington, DC. This is his first book. To contact the author, please email jreznick@aotf.org.
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