Book Review: Canadian Medical History

A leading authority about the First and Second World Wars, Tim Cook is one of Canada’s leading historians and the Chief Historian and Director of Research at the Canadian War Museum in Ottawa. Having written extensively on both world wars, Cook once again demonstrates his expertise in Lifesavers and Body Snatchers: Medical Care and the Struggle for Survival in the Great War. In this work, Cook presents the narrative of the Canadian Army Medical Corps (CAMC), which endured the challenges of practicing medicine in the First World War. Presenting multiple perspectives from stretcher-bearers, nurses, and doctors, Cook explains how the CAMC’s medics attempted to save Canadian patients from illnesses, diseases, and ghastly battlefield wounds. Canadian medical staff treated victims of chemical warfare, soldiers suffering from extreme psychological trauma, and military personnel whose bodies were filled with lead.

            What makes Cook’s text enriching is the breadth of archival sources he uses. The array of soldiers’ memoirs and letters, newspapers, medical documents, and additional miscellaneous military documentation housed at Library and Archives Canada helped Cook construct his contribution to Canadian medical history during the First World War. These sources and Cook’s analysis of them highlight a significant part of Canadian history that is often overlooked within the historiography of Canada’s participation in the First World War. These archival sources reveal the final hours of wounded Canadian soldiers; the psychological, emotional, and physical toll of the war on CAMC staff, and the need to refine, improve, and learn medical tactics and skills to meet the changing nature of the medical war.

            Despite these challenges, Cook reveals that injured Canadian soldiers who received proper treatment had a ninety-percent chance of survival. Indeed, the First World War was a time of medical advancement as Canadian doctors developed surgical skills, employed new X-ray technology, developed the art of facial reconstruction, relied on blood transfusions, and utilized psychiatric methods – including talking therapy – to treat shell-shocked victims. The First World War was a learning curve for Canadian medical personnel as the lessons they acquired on the battlefields of France and Belgium were brought home to Canada at the war's end (Cook, 98). Encountering a multitude of bodily injuries, Cook shows that Canadian doctors developed their techniques when treating injured soldiers. Cook’s analysis of Major Edward Archibald’s 1916 “A Brief Survey of Some Experiences in the Surgery of the Present War” reveals that CAMC medics learned through trial and error how to treat the victims of serious head injuries by closing off their wounds to allow the body’s immune system to fight off infection. As doctors discovered, exposing the head and draining it with a tube often led to “(…) a lot of destroyed mushy brain tissue which sometimes in the course of a few days becomes mixed with a small amount of pus” (Cook, 96).

            At the center of Cook’s book is the narrative that Canadian doctors acquired the remains of deceased Canadian soldiers on the Western Front, which were sent to the Royal College of Surgeons in London. The leading figure of this operation, Lieutenant-Colonel John George Adami of McGill University, authorized removing body parts to create a multi-edition text to educate future medical students. Indeed, Adami focused on “entrance and exit wounds” as well as nerve and jaw damage (Cook, 106). As the first specimens of deceased soldiers arrived in London in 1915, they were housed, analyzed, and publicly displayed at the Royal College of Surgeons. Adami petitioned Ottawa that they be returned to Canada for a future medical museum. In due course, nearly 800 samples were sent to McGill University where Dr. Maude Abbott and her team maintained, organized, and recorded the collection before they were sent on a travelling exhibition to Hamilton, Ontario.

Despite the educational value of collecting body parts as medical samples, Cook raises ethical concerns about the possession of fallen Canadian soldiers' remains. Once citizen soldiers signed their attestation papers upon enlistment, they “gave the military control over [their] … body,” even in death (Cook, 106). It appears that the personnel responsible for the collection, cataloguing, and transporting of human remains from the United Kingdom to Canada never once considered the ramifications of their actions. Cook’s analysis of a December 1915 “Memorandum re-disposal of pathological Specimens, n.d.” reveals that Adami saw the scientific value in collecting body parts and “had no such shame, with his bone and organ collection drawn from Canadian soldiers harvested in the name of advancing medicine” (Cook, 114). This point raises startling concerns that even in death, Canadian servicemembers were still in service to the state. What is most disturbing is that in the years after the First World War, the remains and body parts were eventually discarded, leading “to a callous attitude towards the dead” (Cook, 108).

            Lifesavers and Body Snatchers is highly recommendable for anyone interested in Canada’s experience during the First World War. Cook presents a complex, multifaceted narrative in an approachable manner that historians and the public alike will appreciate. Readers will be engaged as they discover the “larger history of the Canadian medical services” (Cook, 390). This text is a significant contribution to the larger historiography of Canada’s First World War narrative as it prioritizes contemporary perspectives as opposed to secondary analysis. While the text includes grisly and graphic content of war, Cook does not hesitate to present these details to illuminate the business of saving Canadian lives for academia and the public.