Cycle: “On the centenary of the Armistice: health, medicine and humanitarianism from the I World War (1914-1918)”

Colloquium organised by the Inter-university Institute of López Piñero and the Catalan Society of History of Science and Technique

Speaker: Leo Van Bergen

For the first time in history, chemical weapons were massively used during the I World War. That provoked an arduous debate about the humanity or inhumanity of such weapons, a debate in which the medical aspects of the use of war gases played a considerable role. Which were the real mortality rates? When could one say that someone had been poisoned? Which were the pathological consequences of the poisonings? What could doctors and nurses do for the victims? Which psychological effects did gas masks produce?

These are some of the questions that PhD Leo van Bergen, historian of Dutch medicine and author of various academic books, such as Before my Helpless Sight. Suffering, dying and military medicine on the Western Front, and also fiction books, such as Among the Dying, will tackle in his seminar: Monkeyman. Poison gas and World War I. Ascribed to the Netherlands Institute for Military History/Dutch Veterans Institute (Hague), Leo van Bergen runs the magazine Medicine, Conflict and Survival (before, Medicine and War).

More information: http://www.leovanbergen.nl/