Medicine, Health and Irish Experiences of Conflict, 1914-45 (co-edited with David Durnin) is the first exploration of Irish medical and health experiences during the First and Second World Wars, as well as during the Irish revolutionary period. It examines the physical, mental and emotional impact of conflict on Irish political and social life and medical, scientific and official interventions in Irish health matters.

 

The volume asks: What made Irish medical and health experiences unique? Did the financial exigencies of war impact detrimentally on Irish health care provision? How were psychological and emotional responses to war managed in Ireland? Did Ireland witness unique disease trends? And how did Irish medical communities and volunteers partake in international war efforts? The authors suggest that 20th-century warfare and political unrest profoundly shaped Irish experiences of medicine and health and that Irish political, social and economic contexts added unique contours to those experiences not evident in other countries.

 

In pursuing these themes, Medicine, Health and Irish Experiences of Conflict, 1914-45 offers an original and focused intervention into a central, but so far unexplored, theme in Irish medical history.

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Part One: Health and Disease on the Domestic Front 

1. Fionnuala Walsh: ‘“Every Human Life is of National Importance”: The Impact of the First World War on Attitudes to Maternal and Infant Health’. 
2. Patricia Marsh: ‘‘The War and Influenza’: The Impact of the First World War on the 1918-19 Influenza Pandemic in Ireland’. 
3. Anne Mac Lellan: ‘Alone among Neutrals: Ireland’s Unique Experience of Tuberculosis during the Emergency (1939-45)’. 
4. Seán Lucey: 'Medical and Public Health Provision in Second World War Belfast: Integration, Co-ordination and the Emergency Medical Services' 
5. Bryce Evans: ‘Food, Trade Wars and Public Health in Ireland, 1932-1945’ (Bryce Evans) 

Part Two: Health and Political Unrest 

6. Barry Kennerk: ‘War on our Doorstep: Temple Street Hospital and the 1916 Rising’. 
7. David Durnin, title to be confirmed.
8. Fiachra Byrne: ‘The War of the Armies of Cockroaches and Hairs: Hallucinating Conflict in the Political and Personal Frontiers of Ulster during the Irish War of Independence’. 

Part Three: Institutions and Medical Personnel 

9. Ronan Foley: ‘From Front to Home and Back Again: Relational Geographies of Medical Treatment in the First World War’. 
10. Seán Graffin: ‘Hope and Experience: Nurses From Belfast Hospitals in the First World War’. 
11. Clara Cullen: ‘War Work on the Home Front: The Central Sphagnum Depot for Ireland at the Royal College of Science for Ireland (1915-1919)’. 
12. Steven O’Connor: ‘Imperial Continuities: Irish Doctors and the British Armed Forces, 1922-45’. 
13. Jennifer Redmond: ‘Migrants, Medics, Matrons: Exploring the Spectrum of Irish Immigrants in the Wartime British Health Sector’.