1872. 8vo, pp. xx, 403, [1] errata; with engraved frontispiece, and 22 engraved text figures and a number of tables; lightly browned throughout, with some occasional ink staining and minor soiling, small nick at head of pp. 226-232, but otherwise clean and bright; contemporary black half-sheep over pebble-grained boards, spine ruled and lettered in gilt, head of spine worn with minor loss, spine and joints somewhat rubbed and scuffed, extremities bumped and corners worn; still a good copy. Uncommon first edition of this stinging critique of the French Red Cross, known as the Société de Secours pour les Blessés Militaires, by the military surgeon and professor of clinical surgery at the Paris Faculty of Medicine, Léon Le Fort (1829-1893). The work is based upon his experiences during the Italian War (in particular the Battle of Solferino) and the Franco-Prussian War of 1870 where he was chief physician of the mobile ambulances of the Society. As such it provides an important insight into the early history of the Society. As he notes in the preface, for the first time during the 1870 conflict, relief societies operated alongside official military medical units. His conclusion based on his experiences, he regrets to say however, is that ‘the hopes of the launch of the International Society for the Relief of Military Wounded have not been realised. The campaign of 1870 was a failure for the institution... this failure was so serious, the disorder was so great, that, if we paralleled the sums spent and the services rendered, we would arrive, not even at justification, but at the relative glorification of military stewardship’ (p.x). Le Fort divides his work into five sections, looking in turn at the peace-time general organization of the military medical service; the organisation during wartime of the Austrian, Prussian, Italian and French medical services; battlefield hospital reforms; the various relief societies and Geneva Convention; and with the final chapter presenting his summary and conclusions. A further appendix contains four chapters discussing in particular the first ambulance units at the siege of Metz. Based upon his first hand experiences, he describes some of the appalling scenes that he witnessed, and indeed he was held captive during the siege until the city fell.
Le Fort is unflinching in what he perceived to be the many failures he witnessed, and does not shy from highlighting what he perceived to be the drawbacks of the Geneva convention, independent relief societies, voluntary civilian mobile ambulance, and independent nurses (whose moral and professional qualities he viewed as often deplorable). Many of the women, he notes, upon donning the red cross armband, ‘played doctor with our poor soldiers as little girls play mother with their dolls. What happened in France, also happened in Germany, because it is form Germany that we get the word so characteristic of amateur nurses (Dilettanten in der krankenwartung)... dilettantes of the bandage’ (p. 230). The supremacy of the quartermaster over military doctors is similarly criticised, Le Fort, demanding instead the autonomy of the military medical corps. He calls for the provision of doctors, students, and volunteer nurses to the official army medical service, believing that better funding of army medical units would provide better outcomes for battlefield medicine and be of more long term benefit.
Whilst raising many valid points, inevitably his work proved contentious, and it received a damning critique in a contemporary review, his complaints about administrative conflicts being brushed aside as being more personal than constructive. His competence to address the questions posed is beyond doubt, the reviewer notes. ‘A former military doctor, writer, and eminent civilian practitioner, he cooperated extensively, at the request of the Council of the French Society, in organizing its mobile ambulances; he also served as chief surgeon of these ambulances, and finally, he was imprisoned with one of them in Metz until the city's capitulation. In order to give useful advice for the future, it is all the more unfortunate that he took the opportunity to heap blame on his former colleagues, honourable men if ever there were any, whose devotion commands the greatest respect. Reading his work produces a painful impression, which will certainly harm the triumph of whatever truth there may be in the author's views’ (https://international-review.icrc.org/sites/default/files/S1816967800026597a.pdf).