ABSTRACT
At any period when battles were fought, on land or at sea, medical attention was essential for the wounded and Hippocrates had advised ‘He who wishes to be a surgeon should go to war’. However, certain characteristics applied to naval and military medicine that were absent from civilian practice, for patients, healthy young men, were forced to do as the surgeons decreed and there were a great number of patients with medical conditions all to be attended at the same time, immediately and in emergency conditions. A war situation provided dramatic wounds to be treated, frequently far from home and with the surgeons having to extemporise. As wars had to be won for reasons of national prestige, trade and empire, there was considerable political value to healthy fighting men who could secure victory and medical facilities were thus crucial. The desperate state of demobilised soldiers and sailors at the end of a war can be seen all over England in the accounts of parish constables, who regularly disbursed small sums, often 6d. each, to disbanded men carrying a government pass that enabled them to return home in peacetime without being arrested as vagrants.
