Mark Harrison and the history of infectious and tropical diseases
This was followed by an Enhancement Award in the History of Medicine in 2009, which aims to provide the first large-scale, systematic attempt to understand the relationship between globalisation, health and medicine.
Professor Harrison was awarded the 2004 Templer Medal Book Prize for his book, 'Medicine and Victory: British military medicine in World War Two', published by Oxford University Press. In it he argues that the medical services and the advent of antibiotics contributed to the Allied victory by keeping British troops in action. The award is made each year to the book that makes the most significant contribution to the understanding of the history of the British Army.
Two further books by Professor Harrison, both resulting from Wellcome Trust funded projects, are due to be published by OUP in the autumn of 2010.
'The Medical War: British Military Medicine in the First World War', describes the role of preventative and curative medicine in modern warfare. It shows how the mass vaccination of troops against typhoid, stringent sanitation, and education in hygiene radically reduced the rate of unnecessary death by infectious disease among troops. This was the first war in which the number of deaths from battle injuries exceeded deaths from disease. Medicine also contributed to manpower economy in other ways: by reducing the length of time taken to treat disease and injuries and returning many wounded men to battle. In this way, and by sustaining the morale of troops and their families, it played a major role in modern warfare.
'Medicine in the Age of Commerce and Empire: Britain and its Tropical Colonies, 1660-1830', explores the huge impact of colonialism on the development of British medicine. As well as stimulating a supply of new drugs, the large numbers of sailors and soldiers dying in overseas military and hospitals, and the lack of regulations, allowed pathological anatomy (the cutting open of dead bodies to establish the cause of death) to flourish. Colonial hospitals were therefore able to pioneer new forms of medical knowledge and, for the same reason, to explore new treatments with botanical and chemical remedies. The book also shows how former colonial practitioners implanted these new forms of medicine in their civilian practices in Britain.
