Book ID: CBB001250894

War's Waste: Rehabilitation in World War I America (2011)

unapi

Linker, Beth (Author)


University of Chicago Press


Publication Date: 2011
Physical Details: 291 pp.; ill.; bibl.; index
Language: English

With U.S. soldiers stationed around the world and engaged in multiple conflicts, Americans will be forced for the foreseeable future to come to terms with those permanently disabled in battle. At the moment, we accept rehabilitation as the proper social and cultural response to the wounded, swiftly returning injured combatants to their civilian lives. But this was not always the case, as the author reveals in this book. In it, she explains how, before entering World War I, the United States sought a way to avoid the enormous cost of providing injured soldiers with pensions, which it had done since the Revolutionary War. Emboldened by their faith in the new social and medical sciences, reformers pushed rehabilitation as a means to "rebuild" disabled soldiers, relieving the nation of a monetary burden and easing the decision to enter the Great War. The author's narrative moves from the professional development of orthopedic surgeons and physical therapists to the curative workshops, or hospital spaces where disabled soldiers learned how to repair automobiles as well as their own artificial limbs. The story culminates in the postwar establishment of the Veterans Administration, one of the greatest legacies to come out of the First World War.

...More
Reviewed By

Review Connor, J. T. H. (2012) Review of "War's Waste: Rehabilitation in World War I America". Isis: International Review Devoted to the History of Science and Its Cultural Influences (pp. 419-420). unapi

Citation URI
https://data.isiscb.org/isis/citation/CBB001250894/

Similar Citations

Book Heather R. Perry; (2014)
Recycling the Disabled: Army, Medicine, and Modernity in WWI Germany (/isis/citation/CBB535039600/)

Article Silver, John R.; (2012)
Ludwig Guttmann (1899--1980), Stoke Mandeville Hospital and the Paralympic Games (/isis/citation/CBB001200773/)

Thesis Evan P. Sullivan; (2020)
Making Good: World War I, Disability, and the Senses in American Rehabilitation (/isis/citation/CBB655397421/)

Article Roberta Fusco; Enrica Tonina; Chiara Tesi; (2021)
Henry Tonks and the true face of war (/isis/citation/CBB641121129/)

Thesis Byrom, Bradley Allen; (2004)
A Vision of Self Support: Disability and the Rehabilitation Movement in Progressive America (/isis/citation/CBB001562082/)

Article Linker, Beth; (2007)
Feet for Fighting: Locating Disability and Social Medicine in First World War America (/isis/citation/CBB000771376/)

Article Rogers, N.; (2009)
Polio Chronicles: Warm Springs and Disability Politics in the 1930s (/isis/citation/CBB000931890/)

Article Schültke, Elisabeth; (2001)
Ludwig Guttmann: Emerging Concept of Rehabilitation after Spinal Cord Injury (/isis/citation/CBB000300832/)

Article AD (Sandy) Macleod; (2018)
Abrupt treatments of hysteria during World War I, 1914–18 (/isis/citation/CBB464413760/)

Article Bogousslavsky, Julien; Tatu, Laurent; (2013)
French Neuropsychiatry in the Great War: Between Moral Support and Electricity (/isis/citation/CBB001320358/)

Book Schmuhl, Hans-Walter; Roelcke, Volker; (2013)
“Heroische Therapien”: die deutsche Psychiatrie im internationalen Vergleich, 1918--1945 (/isis/citation/CBB001551278/)

Article Linden, Stefanie Caroline; Jones, Edgar; (2013)
German Battle Casualties: The Treatment of Functional Somatic Disorders during World War I (/isis/citation/CBB001214564/)

Book Silver, John R.; (2003)
History of the Treatment of Spinal Injuries (/isis/citation/CBB000630105/)

Authors & Contributors
Silver, John R.
Fusco, Roberta
Macleod, Sandy
Tonina, Enrica
Nair, Aparna
Sullivan, Evan P.
Concepts
World War I
Rehabilitation
Disabilities; disability; accessibility
Therapeutic practice; therapy; treatment
Medicine and the military; medicine in war
Injuries
Time Periods
20th century, early
20th century
19th century
Places
United States
Germany
England
Georgia (U.S.)
Americas
Spain
Institutions
Rockefeller Foundation
International Red Cross
League of Nations
Comments

Be the first to comment!

{{ comment.created_by.username }} on {{ comment.created_on | date:'medium' }}

Log in or register to comment