Open air treatment

[Jennyford]

Does anyone know why open air treatment would be used in military hospitals in WWI? I'm familiar with the use of open-air wards for TB cases, but the pictures I have show wounded soldiers (who don't have TB) in beds out on terraces etc. One of Isabel Hutton's books mentions treating patients outside at a hospital in Serbia. She indicates that wounds healed much better in sunlight.

Was that the rationale for putting beds outside?

Jennian

[centurion]

Possibly a number of factors may be at work here.

1. The Germ Theory of infection was still not fully accepted in all quarters and the concept of mephitic vapours still persisted. Fresh air was seen long seen as an answer (which is why the Nightingale wards were so well ventilated).

2. Even if the patients were not suffering from TB it was considered by some (possibly correctly) that having lots of men in bed in an enclosed space was a good way of encouraging and spreading that disease (and others). Given the prevalence of it in Serbia keeping the patents out doors as much as possible may have been a preventative.

3. Given the poor diet of the time Vitamin D deficiency related illness could be quite rife, especially where people were forced to remain indoors out of sunlight. Vitamins as such were not recognised but it was realised that sunlight helped you get better more quickly (or rather lack of it made you get better more slowly).

4. Sunrays were already recognised as a treatment for certain types of wound (especially burns) and vapour lamps producing UV were already in use (see some earlier posting on water beds).

[truthergw]

The principle of clear fresh air and exposure to it was firmly believed in for all types of ailments until after WW2. Those who could afford to do so, convalesced in Switzerland where the Alpine air was thought to be particularly pure. There were other resorts and spas on the Continent and here in UK, the Malverns for example, where one drank the waters and spent as much time as possible in the open air. For the classic account, ( and a bit of culture) read Thomas Mann's " The Magic Mountain".

[Jennyford]

Thanks to both

Jennian

[John Gilinsky]

Open air treatments go back considerably longer before ww1 as a military form of treating sick and wounded. The Simla hills in northern India were used by the British for generations before 1914 for example. Think of the Spa at Bath and other taking the seaside cure for all kinds of ailments that were prescribed by civilian physicians again well before 1914. Keep in mind that the vast majority of the military medical personnel at least officers in the war were actually civilian practitioners before and even during the war to some extent and that they would clearly have favoured treatments that they were most familiar with and that they believed worked. The rest cure generally has been with us for eons.

John

Toronto

P.S. There is a great postcard of the Cambridge Military Hospital showing patients outside the hospital flats that were erected circa fairly early say late summer 1915 or spring 1916 that shows this outdoor taking in the sun by bed ridden military patients.

[centurion]

Simla (more correctly Shimla) and the other hill stations of India, Dalhousie, Dehra Dun etc etc. were used as refuges from the heat of the Indian plain (in effect Simla became the summer capital of the Raj) they were not particularly hospital sites but were used by convalescents - mainly those suffering from exhaustion rather than physical wounds (indeed some doctors recommended them for those patients that did not have physical wounds). However you can still get some nasty insect bites and I doubt that bed bound patients were left outdoors. They were more akin to Brighton (in the Regency) than Bath but like both in that they were places were the upper crust went to see and be seen. The Magic Mountains: Hill Stations and the British Raj. by Dane Kennedy gives a very good account of them

[Pete1052]

Ventilation was considered to be an important design feature in newly built U.S. Army hospitals during our Civil War in the 1860s. Fetid odors and miasmas were then considered to be causes of disease. As recently as about 1980 I heard the story of a nurse in a German hospital opening the windows of a patient's room in the winter for a daily blast of fresh air.

[truthergw]

Hi Pete. The belief in the beneficial attributes of fresh air continued well into the 1950s in UK. Many TB sanatoria consisted of ' chalets' which were open to the air on one wall and rotated on their bases. They were turned to avoid the wind but otherwise were exposed. The beds had waterproof covers and I have brushed light snow off the top cover while visiting. Patients could spend the best part of a year and sometimes more, in these wards. The treatment by powerful antibiotics superseded all that and surgical intervention which was also common.

[centurion]

Ventilation was considered to be an important design feature in newly built U.S. Army hospitals during our Civil War in the 1860s. Fetid odors and miasmas were then considered to be causes of disease. As recently as about 1980 I heard the story of a nurse in a German hospital opening the windows of a patient's room in the winter for a daily blast of fresh air.

Again the influence of Ms Nightingale, before her outside air, especially night air, was regarded as dangerous to patients. The Nightingale ward design became a standard for many hospitals around the country.

[Jim Strawbridge]

Slightly off the subject. I am a country lad. To my knowledge nearly all cattle sheds and barns in the UK are not fully enclosed but are constructed with gaps in the sides (normally about 10 ft or above) for ventilation purposes. I have always been led to believe that this was for the health of the animals who benefited from circulating air.

[Tony Lund]

At Huddersfield and Holmfirth the style of building used for the War Hospitals was a semi-open affair, with asbestos and timber walls and roof on a brick foundation. One side was left open and screened with canvas during bad weather.

Tony.