War's silver lining

Medical scans

Listen to the talk about medical advances in World War I and do the exercises to practise and improve your listening skills.

Instructions

Do the preparation exercise before you listen. Then do the other exercises to check your understanding.

Remote audio URL

Transcript

Good morning, everybody. Today I'm going to talk about one of the most terrible wars of the twentieth century. Although it took place mainly in Europe, it involved countries from all over the world. I'm talking, of course, about the First World War, from 1914 to 1918, which resulted in the death of about ten million military personnel. Despite the enormous human cost, the war did have some positive consequences. In fact, it was precisely because of the nature and scale of the horrors of the battlefield that many important medical advances were made, as new equipment and techniques had to be developed quickly to cope with the huge number of injuries.

As I said, the scale of the First World War was huge. New weapons were used that were designed to kill on an industrial scale, such as machine guns, tanks and poison gases. These produced brutal results: many deaths and about twice as many injuries. Those injured suffered very severe wounds and this pushed the medical establishment to build on recent discoveries and to come up with solutions for the new problems faced by doctors. I'm going to tell you about a few of these.

You probably know that X-rays were discovered in 1895, and were developed for limited medical use in the following year. But their use became much more widespread during the war, when they helped detect fragments of bombs and bullets buried in tissue. They allowed doctors to extract these elements, which would otherwise have caused serious infections. Stretchers for carrying injured people had also been in use before the war, but the development of rescuing the wounded from the battlefield, by sending in stretcher-bearers to bring them back as quickly as possible, was completely new. The modern concept of a paramedic, who is able to apply first aid in the field, also comes from this time.

Blood transfusion was in its early days at the time of the Great War. It was done person-to-person, that is, with a tube transferring blood from one person to another. This was extremely impractical and carried a very high risk. The rigours of the war demanded a better solution and by 1917 indirect transfusion had been developed. It was possible to store blood on ice for up to 26 days and deal much better with battle injuries. For many, this was the most significant medical breakthrough of the war.

The war also saw advances in treating wounds which demanded that the patient be unconscious while undergoing procedures. In 1917 the anaesthetist Henry Boyle invented a machine which could provide a steady flow of oxygen, nitrous oxide and ether, and this provided the basis of all the anaesthesia machines that followed. Operations without pain – a wonderful innovation, I'm sure you'll agree.

So the next time you have an X-ray, donate blood or undergo an operation, spare a thought for those doctors, nurses, researchers and patients back at the time of World War I – we owe them a lot!
 

Discussion

Have you ever benefited from any of the medical advances developed in World War I?

Language level
Average: 3.2 (5 votes)
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Comments

Submitted by barbie on Wed, 01/31/2024 - 03:11

Really interesting!

Submitted by Cucaso on Wed, 01/31/2024 - 01:33

I understood most of the things, but in some parts I had misunderstandings

Submitted by Cucaso on Wed, 01/31/2024 - 01:32

I understood almost everything, I just misunderstood in some parts, but it went well

Submitted by rbm-2009'5 on Tue, 01/30/2024 - 23:39

I think that The first World War was one of the scariest wars at the world but this war had a lot of positive consequences such as X-rays and blood transfusions.
In mu opinion this war was useful for improving a lot of positive medical advances but a bad thing about it is that there were a lot of deaths.

Submitted by diegoy on Tue, 01/30/2024 - 13:11

Yes I also think that si a little bit complicated

Submitted by DaniFlores on Tue, 01/30/2024 - 03:48

The WAR made a big change, it marked an after and a before in all aspects.
One aspect was the medicine that has to improve because of the circumstances of that time.

Submitted by DSAC on Tue, 01/30/2024 - 03:42

I really like this topic, is a little bit complicated but I understood everything, i really like knowing about things we use nowadays that were invented and really useful during WW1 and that saved lifes and also do nowadays, I would like to learn more about it.

Submitted by olviz on Tue, 01/30/2024 - 03:41

Learning about the First World War and its medical advancements was really interesting. It contributed to my understanding of historical events and the impact on healthcare. Exploring the challenges during the war and the innovations is a good way to increase English comprehension.

Submitted by salazar on Tue, 01/30/2024 - 02:52

This is a very good page to help us reinforce some topics or learn a little more English and in a few words it is a very good English page

Submitted by RomBoj on Tue, 01/30/2024 - 00:18

It is a very interesting but at the same time difficult topic because of the people who died and the injures.

Submitted by iki_687 on Mon, 01/29/2024 - 23:56

This is a really interesting topic which made me learn a lot!, it is extremely surprising how a lot of medical advancements were made during WW1. It's true that WW1 was terrible but it still contributed positively. We use a lot of these medical advancements in our current life, blood transfusions, anesthetics, x-rays, etc. Many people would be dead without these.

Submitted by isi27 on Mon, 01/29/2024 - 22:53

I found it very interesting and educational and I liked that it focused on medical advances and non-negative things about war.

Submitted by goul on Mon, 01/29/2024 - 22:22

It was an interesting topic how does they work in te past :))

Submitted by Olgar on Thu, 10/05/2023 - 07:14

this is a bit to easy for me like im only 14 and this to ez

Submitted by pomelo on Fri, 04/14/2023 - 14:50

I never:))

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Submitted by Bill on Fri, 03/01/2019 - 13:20

Very good and interesting topic! Thank u British Council's LearnEnglish Teens

Submitted by yee on Fri, 02/22/2019 - 12:04

It is a little complicated.
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