There is a lot of debate about how much war and medicine have influenced each other. Sometimes war adds to medical knowledge by drawing attention to a particular injury, such as the loss of a limb. Military medicine has also influenced how medicine is done. But sometimes innovations in military medicine result in better ways to treat an injury or advance fields of medicine, such as plastic surgery, psychiatry and emergency medicine. Triage, the system of prioritising multiple casualties, has been adopted for all emergency medicine ever since the First World War.
For some people, the physical and mental damage caused by war lasts a lifetime. Medical teams have had to develop methods to help them adjust to living with disability and illness. The young men who signed up to fight in 1914 had little preparation or support for dealing with the stress and trauma of modern warfare. Some refused to fight and were mistakenly accused of cowardice. During the First World War, 309 British soldiers were executed, many of whom are now believed to have had mental health conditions at the time.
He led important campaigns and expanded his empire from Greece to Persia, Babylon, Egypt and beyond, taking advantage of local political contexts as he conquered new territory
