European medical experts in wars of ‘others’: the Greco-Turkish War of 1897

Abstract

In current debates on humanitarianism and empire, historians of the nineteenth century have focused mostly on the engagement of British, French and German individuals in their own imperial wars. However, many medical experts from these empires crossed imperial boundaries and risked their lives on foreign battlegrounds. This article elaborates on the involvements of experts in the ‘wars of others’ by focusing on the presence of humanitarian missions and surgeons from all over Europe in the short Greco-Turkish War of 1897. What prompted them to ignore criticism levelled against such involvement by their compatriots and the existing medical staff of both sides of the conflict? Tracing the global compassion that the locally confined hostilities between Greece and the Ottoman Empire inspired, the article first highlights the institutional mobilization of humanitarian associations in Britain, France and Germany. It then delves into individual reasons for taking action. Drawing on newspaper articles, institutional reports and individual medical publications, the article discusses how European experts used the wars of ‘others’ to test and assess recent medical knowledge and new technologies. These experts’ practices of comparing reveal that the physicians considered the Greco-Turkish War less as a conflict of foreign powers than as a laboratory for future wars of their own empires.

Keywords:

• Humanitarianism
• empire
• European Red Cross
• medical experts
• Greco-Turkish War 1897
• practices of comparing

Acknowledgements

In completing this article, I would like to acknowledge gratitude to Mahshid Mayar, Tom Tölle and the participants of the 7^th Notre-Dame/Bielefeld doctoral exchange workshop, for their comments and criticism on this paper.

Notes

1. Rathberger, “The Ambassadors’ Conference.”

2. The extent of international support (in personnel and finances) can only be estimated. The Greek Red Cross’s organizational account offers some information, see Notices sur les Opérations, 29–36. According to this report, people from Switzerland alone contributed over 13,000 francs while the Red Cross association of Japan transferred an additional 1000 francs as well as medical equipment. For one example of the global attention these events got, see the news reports from Chicago and Sydney: “Greek Priest in Chicago;” “British Help for the Greek Wounded.”

3. Throughout the entire British Empire, people wanted to offer their help. Nurses in Sydney mobilized to join a group of volunteers from the Greek community down under, but were stopped by the Greek consul in town who argued that the battlefield was too far away and that they would not arrive before the end of the war. “Help for the Wounded.”

4. Hopkirk, “Nurses for Greece (I).”

5. Some of Hopkirk’s opponents might also have seized the opportunity to take revenge on him for the plea in favour of vaccination he made for the Royal British Commission. See: Leverson, “Vaccination.”

6. Senn, “Military Surgery in Greece,” 405.

7. Senn, “Military Surgery in Turkey,” 565.

8. Notices sur les Opérations.

9. War experiences play only a minor role in the overviews of developments in the history of medicine throughout the nineteenth century. See i.e. Bynum, Science and the Practice of Medicine. Studies on the history of military medicine have hardly ever dealt with the issue of European medical services in foreign military campaigns see i.e.: Belmas and Nonnis-Vigilante, La Santé des Populations Civiles et Militaires, 75–178; Haller, Battlefield Medicine; Gabriel, Between Flesh and Steel, 129–93; Wright, A History of War Surgery; Fredj, “Compter les morts de Crimée.” Although there are some historiographical exceptions which touch upon foreign medical services in the Greco-Turkish War, these studies are mostly descriptive and with a strong focus on technical innovations. See Thomas and Banerjee, The History of Radiology, 39–40. Or more specifically, Ramoutsaki, Giannacos, and Livadas, “Birth of Battlefield Radiology.”

10. Cirillo, Bullets and Bacilli; Fredj, “Médecins en Campagne.” By contrast, Pratik Chakrabarti’s recent account on the entanglement between empire and medicine provides just one chapter on the changes of military medicine in the eighteenth century. See, Chakrabarti, Medicine and Empire, 40–56.

11. As an exception, see Ken Daimaru’s recently published article in which he analysis how Japanese and European surgeons exchanged information about ‘humanitarian bullets’ between 1890 and 1905. Daimaru, “Entre Blessures de Guerre et Guerre des Blessures.”

12. Barnett, Empire of Humanity.

13. Rodogno, Against Massacre.

14. Ibid.; Gill, Calculating Compassion.

15. Gill, “The Origins of the British Red Cross Society,” 10.

16. Giannakopoulos, “A British International Humanitarianism?”

17. Ibid., 314.

18. The concept of practices of comparing goes back to an interdisciplinary research centre at Bielefeld University. For an overview, see Grave, “Vergleichen als Praxis.” For further information on how practices of comparing relate localities globally, see, Shih, “Comparison as Relation;” Epple, “Doing Comparisons.”

19. Quotation from the leader of the Cretan Wounded Nursing Fund, Ormiston Chant, “Cretan Wounded Nursing Fund.”

20. Callwell, Small Wars, 21.

21. See for instance Callwell’s exposition on the difference between regular warfare and warfare in small wars, Ibid., 23.

22. Roth, The Encyclopedia of War Journalism, 1807–2010, 570.

23. Maras, Philhellenismus; Roessel, In Byron’s Shadow; Basch, Le Mirage Grec.

24. Most of the more than 750 international volunteers were of Italian origin, yet there were also Philhellenic groups from France, Britain or Denmark. Pécout, “Une Amitié Politique Méditerranéenne: Le Philhellénisme Italien et Français au XIXe Siècle.”

25. “Poor Crete, but Poorer Cuba;” “The War Fever.” See, Laity, The British Peace Movement, 140–2.

26. The Great Powers changed their attitude throughout the war. Once Ottoman troops had conquered the whole region of Thessaly, they forced the conflicting parties to agree to a ceasefire agreement. The most detailed analysis on the diplomatic backgrounds until the peace treaty is given by Moutafidou, Beitrag zur Konflikt- und Allianzforschung. For a more compact and English version see: Rathberger, “The Ambassadors’ Conference.”

27. “Le Comité International,” 160. [Unless otherwise indicated, translations are mine.]

28. Forsythe, The Humanitarians, 24.

29. “Le Comité International,” 162. Things changed, however, in 1898 when Greece was forced to pay high war reparations to the Ottoman Empire. Still being confronted with a huge number of refugees from the region of Thessaly, the bankrupt country now had to ask for further financial support from the ICRC. See “Appel en Faveur de La Croix-Rouge Hellénique.”

30. “La Croix-Rouge des Neutres,” 173.

31. “La Société Anglaise en 1897 et 1898,” 107.

32. The newspaper La Presse published a complete list of all donors every day. See, Comité de la presse française, “Pour la Grèce.”

33. “Nouvelles Du Jour.”

34. Lapersonne, Le Professeur Panas.

35. Delahousse, “Le Médecin Principal,” 113. For Panas’ initiative, see Bouloumié’s more detailed report, “Hôpital-Ambulance Franco-Hellène N° 1.”

36. Bouloumié, “Hôpital-Ambulance Franco-Hellène N° 1,” 124.

37. Jahresbericht des Central-Comités, 14.

38. Ibid.

39. Quoted from the bulletin of the ICRC by Barton, The Red Cross, 27.

40. Bugnion, Le Comité International de la Croix-Rouge et la Protection des Victimes de la Guerre, 55–65.

41. Bouloumié, “Hôpital-Ambulance Franco-Hellène N° 1,” 123.

42. Schlich, “One and the Same.”

43. Müller, Erinnerungen eines Schweizerarztes, 5.

44. “BAR 27/12585.”

45. Müller, Erinnerungen eines Schweizerarztes, 53.

46. Ibid., 20.

47. Ibid., 34.

48. It seems that Müller tries to justify this fact with reference to his young Greek colleagues who, like himself, “did their surgical apprenticeship on the basis of the rich material.” Ibid., 32.

49. Müller and Tavel, “Aus dem Bacteriologischen Institut.”

50. Lardy, La Guerre Gréco-Turque, 23–4.

51. “Quarterly Report of the Red Cross;” “Reconstitution de la Société Ottomane;” Uregen, “Le Croissant-Rouge,” 80–5.

52. Lardy, La Guerre Gréco-Turque, 171.

53. See i.e.: “Les Sociétés de Secours,” 1032.

54. Abbott, “Surgery in the Graeco-Turkish War (1),” 80.

55. Mohr, “Schussverletzungen.” See also: Seydel, “Kriegschirurgie.” As Ken Daimarus’ article shows, these debates were not confined only to the European continent, but were also vividly debated in imperial Japan. See Daimaru, “Entre Blessures de Guerre et Guerre des Blessures.”

56. Mohr, “Schussverletzungen,” 116.

57. Lardy, La Guerre Gréco-Turque, 180–323. German surgeons Korsch and Felde furnished observations on fewer cases but with more details. See, Korsch and Velde, Kriegschirurgische Erfahrungen, 37–57. The British representatives published their findings in the form of articles and, due to this fact, gave only a few examples, see for instance: Davis, “Gunshot Injuries.”

58. Korsch and Velde illustrated the death rate of the treated wounded in tabular form. Korsch and Velde, Kriegschirurgische Erfahrungen, 36.

59. Longmore, Gunshot Injuries, V. Longmore’s publication had become a classic manual by the 1890s, and had just been reprinted in a second edition in 1895. Korsch and Velde complained about this development and the lack of literature on shrapnel splitters. The new calibres made it difficult to distinguish between wounds that were caused by the new Martini or Gras rifles from those induced by shrapnel. Korsch and Velde, Kriegschirurgische Erfahrungen, 38. Referring to Korsch and Velde, Lardy mentions similar findings; see Lardy, La Guerre Gréco-Turque, 336, 342–4.

60. Lardy, La Guerre Gréco-Turque, 336.

61. Abbott, “Surgery in the Graeco-Turkish War (1),” 80.

62. Ramoutsaki, Giannacos, and Livadas, “Birth of Battlefield Radiology.”

63. Küttner, Ueber die Bedeutung.

64. Davis, “Gunshot Injuries.”

65. Abbott, “Surgery in the Graeco-Turkish War (1),” 81. Similar in Küttner, Ueber die Bedeutung, 98.

66. Abbott, “Surgery in the Graeco-Turkish War (1),” 81.

67. Yorulmaz, Arming the Sultan, 129–32.

68. Lardy, La Guerre Gréco-Turque, 205.

69. Küttner, Ueber die Bedeutung, 92.

70. Abbott shared Küttner’s opinion. See, Abbott, “Surgery in the Graeco-Turkish War (2),” 156.

71. Müller, Erinnerungen eines Schweizerarztes, 24.

72. The leader of the German mission in Constantinople, Prof. Dr Nasse from Berlin, died in an accident during his service. As his colleague reports, Nasse had already lost the feeling in one of his fingers due to an infection in Yıldız hospital. Bergmann, “Zum Andenken an Prof. Dr. Nasse,” 1031.

73. Medical experts contrasted these individual cases in the following with their own observations.

74. Abbott, “Surgery in the Graeco-Turkish War (2),” 82.

75. Gürsel, “Thinking with X-Rays.”

76. Military journals regularly published reviews on surgical observations in warlike contexts. See for instance in the case of Lardy: “La Guerre Gréco-Turque [Review].”

77. Günther, “Das Infanteriegewehr,” 235.

78. Thus, after Henry Davis had presented his observations to the audience of the West London Medico-Chirurgical Society, famous war surgeons who had been to earlier wars joined in making these temporal comparisons. See, “West London Medico-Chirurgical Society.”