The theme for this Edition is the history of developments in military medicine. As I was preparing for this Edition, I was reminded of some letters that I had from my great-uncle, Captain Gordon O. Robertson, who was the Regimental Medical Officer for the 57th Battalion, A.I.F. in 1918. On the 10th July 1918, he wrote the following to his Commanding Officer:
“The health of the men in the Battalion is fairly good at present except for this epidemic of influenza which has left all of those affected with it very weak. This combined with the continue strain of line work is gradually undermining their health.
I would advise that the Battalion, if possible, should be given shorter spells in the line in order to give the men every chance by rest and cleanliness to keep in health. If they are kept in the line for long spells now there is every reason to expect large evacuations with sickness and also a large number of evacuations with nervous instability if they have to undergo a bombardment”
Despite the passing of nearly 94 years, our military health staff continue to manage the challenges of infectious diseases, mental health issues and communication with senior officers. As many have postulated before, we ignore the lessons of history at our peril.
We are fortunate to have three excellent new, and one reprinted, historical military medical articles on the First World War (“Problems in Paradise”), Second World War (“Pioneer Aviation and a Medical Legacy”), and the challenges of infectious diseases (“History of plague”, “Australian Malaria Institute”) in this Edition. These are all introduced with a guest Editorial by Dr Keith Horsley. In addition, we have a range of new articles on methods for cooling during operations, perspectives on traumatic limb amputations and new Naval medical capabilities.
I am pleased to see more and more articles being submitted to the Journal and I would encourage all our readers to consider submitting an article. We have recently been indexed in Scopus and CINAHL and continue to work towards indexing in PubMed, which should make the Journal more attractive for our authors. Our next themed issues are on ‘Mental Health’ (July 2012) and ‘Veterans’ Health’ (October 2012), so if you have relevant papers, please get them in soon. All other articles are also welcome.
Please specify the URL of your file
