Medical question

[Hagen]

How were submarines, (any navy) set up to handle a medical emergency, did they have at least a trained medic on board? And if not who would take care of any medical problems that may occur?

[joseph]

Not normally a Sick Berth Attendant, the Coxswain would deal along with the First Lt. and medical partys normally Officers Stewards.

Regards Charles

[Hagen]

Thank you joseph.

[DirtyDick]

How were submarines, (any navy) set up to handle a medical emergency, did they have at least a trained medic on board? And if not who would take care of any medical problems that may occur?

During WW1?

The Germans had limited first aid training and carried medical chests containing morphine, etc.

The British gave no formal medical training to any submarine crewmen - aside from basic first aid - and carried very limited supplies (no morphine, either), which they weren't formally trained to use. If you got ill or injured, treatment was a very extemporised affair and you just had to hope you'd last until you got home.

The role of the First Lieutenant and (principally) the Coxswain as the official medicos developed after WW1, but accounts from WW2 show treatment was not much better.

[Michael Lowrey]

The difference in mediacl training and equipment between German and British submarines in WWI is in part (mostly?) explained by German submarines conducting much longer patrols than was common for RN boats. For example, the missing British E class boats in the Norh Sea disappeared while on patrols of 8 days or less. By comparison, the typical patrol length for a German U-series diesel torpedo attack boats based in German or the Med was about a month.

Best wishes,

Michael

[centurion]

I read in an old 1920s work that at least some small surface vessels were equiped with a medicine chest containing a range of medications in numbered bottles, boxes and phials. The idea seems to have been that the cox or whoever else was acting as medic could signal for advice to a larger ship that had a doctor and get instructions such as "give him two doses of no.12" (this of course would become more practical as the use of wireless became more wide spread). There is a story (probably apocryphal) that the cox of one such small vessel dealing with a sick silor in a storm managed to get a signal to the mother ship and got the response "give him a dose of no 9" before contact was lost. On return to post he was appoached by the mother ship's doctor and asked how things had gone "oh fine sir, we was out of no. 9 but I gave hime half a dose of no 5 and half a dose of no 4 and that did the trick".