Military Public Health from the Crimea to World War One

Speaker: Dr Beverly Bergman (University of Glasgow)

The military success of a fighting force depends in large part on the availability of fit, healthy troops, but the austere conditions of war often conspire to allow disease to flourish, and in every armed conflict up to very recent times, disease has claimed more victims than has battle injury. Beverly Bergman, a former military consultant public health physician who is now researching veterans’ health at the University of Glasgow, explores in this talk how the development of an understanding of the principles of public health in wartime during the late nineteenth century helped to protect troops exposed to the challenging conditions of the First World War.