A Farewell To Arms

[Guest spartacus]

The battlefront is a different perspective, its very hard to imagine, but if if you were not killed, but you had an injury - what were your survival chances?

 

50 - 50! Less!

 

Depending on the wound, maybe it would have been better to die in combat, than a slow death!

[Primus Pilus]

In the ancient world?

[Guest spartacus]

yes in the Ancient world, I should have been clearer!

 

I would imagine the field doctors main implements would be a saw and cleaver, I suspect infection was a big factor in the deaths of injured soldiers, though it is one subject I do not have much information on so if anyone knows a little more I would like to read about it

[Primus Pilus]

Military medicine and hospital facilities were actually quite advanced compared to civilian quacks. Still, you are right, despite their great efforts.. infection and fever could still kill at an alarming rate.

[Jimbow]

I've read a similar thread before, and, actually, the mortality rate is thought to have been very low. It had something to do with being transported to medical facilities, which in itself caused more stress on the body and inhibited the healing process. There are cases of First World War soldiers refusing treatment aside from what they received in the field, and healing, as opposed to their comrades who had to endure a long and painful journey to the hospital. At the hospital, infections were a problem in themselves, whereas remaining in fresh open air ironically reduced the risk of infection.

 

Surgeons were also quite skilled, supposedly.

Channel 4 Rome surgeons This is a short link.

 

Ancient remedies are also pretty potent, forming the basis for many modern synthetic remedies: Aloe Vera

 

I'll see if I can find the webpage that had a report about the new theory of low mortality rates.

[sonic]

The Romans gained much of their knowledge of medicine from the Greeks. The Greeks had early realsied that men who were kept in a clean and airy environment recovered from wounds and illnesses more than those on dirty, fetid environments. Although they did not know about bacteria etc, the Greeks were intelligent enough to go with the flow; and the Romans were also intelligent enough to keep hospitals etc as clean as possible.

 

Many of the surgical implements used in modern medicine have an equivalent in Ancient Roman medicine. I'd rather be injured on a Roman battlefield than any during the Middle Ages or even up to quite recently. The English Army only began to take things seriously after the efforts of Florence Nightingale in the Crimean War.

 

And for those interested in military medicine, try looking up the history of Mary Seacole (I think I've spelt that correctly). She worked at the same time as Nightingale, but didn't get the same recognition. Find out why for yourself!

[caldrail]

It is true that roman military medicine was very good for its time, but they had limits, and the best care required the patient to be brought to the equivalent of a field hospital. Many people would have died from their injuries before they could be treated. We're talking about melee combat where people stab you or slice bits off. There's a lot of bodies lying on an ancient battlefield and to get the care you needed some element of luck to be in the right place and discovered soon. Shock and bloodloss were killers. Peritonitis from stomach wounds a slower death, but reasonably common back then I would have thought. Its difficult to give statistics but a large proportion of the casualties were goners, either on the field or within a few days. Even with the care, there's no guarantee you'll pull through. Enemy swords are not really the most hygenic implements.

[Gaius Octavius]

The Roman surgeons' instruments are easily recognized by a modern surgeon. They were hardly added to up until WWI. Each legionary was given First Aid training, and the legions had ambulances. Each legion had surgeons, the camps had makeshift hospitals, and the forts had permanent hospitals, which were kept clean.

[caldrail]

All well and good if you get there. But despite roman hygiene I doubt your average roman legionary on campaign was spotlessly clean, and his enemy might well be worse. By the time the wounded man is recovered - and we don't see ambulances or helicopters back then - the wound could easily be infected.

 

I must stress that medical care is not immediate in the roman world. You go down in the battle and you probably stay where you fell until someone else spots you during the clean-up afterward. There's a field full of dead and dying men, so it might be pot luck that they find you in time. It simply wasn't possible to shout "MEDIC!" and get treatment on the spot.

[Bryaxis Hecatee]

Well I'm more a specialist of the Greek military questions than of the roman ones, since my end of studies paper relates to the logistic of the Greek armies in the classical era, but I see that Greeks had surgeons on the battle field at least since Homer ( at which time the surgeon was also a combatant ), and certainly had city-surgeons in time of war during the 6th and 7th centuries BC. In the classical period the best source of information is Xenophon which shows us that the 10 000 had a corp of at least 8 surgeons during their retreat.

 

Also the authors tells us ( Hippocrates, Gallien, ... ) that field surgeons where very good and also had a lot of practice and were a good place to start learning medicine. So I'd say the survival rate once found would be rather good. ( I'm called to eat so I can't continue my post, I'll be back later )

Edited May 1, 2007 by Bryaxis Hecatee