Varga Benedek szerk.: Orvostörténeti közlemények 149-157. (Budapest, 1996)

ADATTÁR / DOCUMENTS - Plavecz Tibor: Magyar honvéd- és katonaorvosok tapasztalatai az első világháborúban

SUMMARY Research on the health provision of the Great War has not received much attention in Hungarian medical historical scholarship. The documents published here give some view about the sanitary conditions, the organisation of medical units, and the ambulance equipment of Austro—Hungarian armed forces between 1914—1919. After the declaration of war many physicians, professors from university clinics, medical students, etc. were also mobilised. These basically civilian physicians were sent as medical officers or members of the paramedical staff of the K.u.K. Armee, the Magyar Királyi Honvédség (Hungarian Royal Defense Corps), the Landwehr, and the K.u.K. Kriegsmarine to the numerous fronts Austria—Hungary was fighting on. After peace was settled they returned to their previous posts or continued their studies. At the end of 1924 the Hungarian Royal Minister of Defense required first world war medical veterans to write a report, by answering 20 questions about their warfare experiences. The objective was obvious enough: the great war brought in many respects entirely new military experiences together and the new requirements needed new organisational methods even in military surgery to be adopted. These thoughtfully selected three reports of Hungarian medical officers, from the collection of the Hadtörténelmi Levéltár (Archives for Military History), represent the 171 reports that were eventually passed. The first two was written by front-line medical officers who served on various battlefields. The first reporter had had his military career through several fightings in Serbia, Bosnia and Italy. The second one, after a short time he had spent in Montenegro and BosniaHercegovina, accompanied the Orientkorps to Palestine and later became a POW in Asia Minor. The third doctor occupied a somewhat higher rank, he was medical commander of military field hospitals and later of medical trains on the Russian and Italian fronts. Since the questionnaire encouraged proposals as well, these middle-rank medical officers were certainly keen on providing lengthy and detailed advices. Their considerations, based on their own 4—5 years front-line experiences, present a clear view about the reorganisation of the services, the essential renewal of sets of equipments, which were needed to supply adequate first aid or even serious treatment for the wounded. The reports also include many notices about the most ordinary and the specific hurts, injuries and wounds the servicemen had suffered, about the hygienic conditions of military hospitals, and the first aid posts in the truncheons.