The History of Surgery in World War I: Assessments of Wounded Soldiers in Germany

Abstract

World War I not only resulted in a total of far more than 16,000,000 dead soldiers and civilians but also left countless soldiers with severe wounds and impairments. The present article focuses on the medical assessments of wounded soldiers during and after World War I. As many official files, including medical records of German World War I soldiers, were destroyed during World War II in April 1945, finding original materials on this topic is challenging. The following article examines an original correspondence between the surgeon, Georg Benno Schmidt (1860 – 1935), and the ophthalmologist, August Wagenmann (1863 – 1955), who were both full professors at Heidelberg University, which took place approximately 15 months after the end of World War I in 1919. This correspondence demonstrates the immense workload faced by physicians responsible for assessing World War I veterans, even more than a year after the war had ended.

Keywords

• independent medical evaluation
• 20th century history of medicine
• general surgery