ABSTRACT
Nearly half of Hannibal’s armywas lost to cold-related injuries while crossing the Alps in 218 B.C. (1). Hypothermiarelated morbidity andmortality sustained by soldiers during the American Revolutionary War prompted Rush (2) to forbid soldiers from sleeping or resting in wet clothes. During the frozen retreat from Moscow, Napoleon’s Surgeon General, Larrey, noted that injured soldiers close to the fire paradoxically died more quickly than those who remained relatively hypothermic (unwittingly describing the concept of afterdrop for the first time). Larrey (3) also shed light on the detrimental effects of repeated thawing and refreezing of extremities. Cold-related injuries suffered during both theWorldWars and the Korean Conflict contributed to the misery suffered by the soldiers and affected the results of numerous battles (4,5). More recently, frigid winter conditions in the mountains of Afghanistan and Pakistan have influenced tactics employed by military special operations forces in conducting the war on terror.
