HEALERS, HELPERS AND HOSPITALS
ASPECTS OF MILITARY MEDICINE IN THE ANGLO-BOER WAR
DR KAY DE VILLIERS

Healers, Helpers and Hospitals – Aspects of Military Medicine in the Anglo-Boer War places the military-medical practice of the Anglo-Boer War in the context of contemporary civilian medical practice, ethical concepts and the dictates of the local physical and cultural environment. Medical care in the field, as provided by Boer and British organisations, is considered against the backdrop of military activities on the various fronts. It is the first book to thoroughly discuss and illustrate the radiology, wound surgery and other important details of medical practice of the Anglo-Boer War.

This monumental work certainly is an authoritative text on the War and earns the right to be called “the bible” of medical history concerning the Anglo-Boer War. It covers all imaginable medical aspects that occurred during the War. It also incorporates many subjects that have until now never been thoroughly researched or documented.
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The fact that the book is published in English makes it a viable and exemplary international product.

– Dr Arnold van Dyk

At long last a comprehensive, well-researched military-medical history of the Anglo-Boer War has been written.
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Both sides documented the conventional war but when guerrilla warfare broke out, it became impossible for the Boers to continue documenting events and thus only the British recorded the guerrilla war. The Boer’s information had to be gleaned from a mass of diaries, memoirs, articles and doctors’ treatises on their experience during the war. A great deal of this research was done in foreign languages because foreign governments had sent aid to the Boers in sympathy for their cause. Most of this information has now, for the first time, been published in the same edition.
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There is an account of the use of traditional medicines by the Boers as well as the stories of unqualified "medical" helpers assisting the Boers in the later part of the struggle. Even psychiatric conditions found in the combatants are delved into and explained.

– Dr Rasmus Jooste

CONTENTS OF THE BOOK

This is not just another book about the Anglo-Boer War, but the first work dedicated to the topic of military medicine as practised during this war. It places the military-medical activities of the War in the context of contemporary civilian medical practice, ethical concepts and the dictates of the local physical and cultural environment. Medical organisation in the two combatant camps and the difficulties encountered by both due to their inadequate preparedness for a lingering war are described. The extensive medical aid, in the form of ambulances received by the Boer Republics from foreign donors, is contrasted with the large injection of medical aid received by the British field force from private donors and private institutions in Britain. Medical care in the field as provided by Boer and British organisations is considered against the backdrop of military activities on the various fronts.

Clinical aspects of the wounds encountered and the treatment provided by surgeons on both sides make up the only purely technical chapter in the book. Typhoid fever, the most important non-surgical disease during the war, is dealt with in some detail, as are the plague epidemic in Cape Town and the measles epidemic experienced by the Boers in particular. The use of traditional medicines by the Boers and the activities of some unqualified “medical” helpers found a place in health care provision, particularly during the guerrilla phase of the war, are thoroughly discussed. Psychiatric ailments encountered in this war are also extensively dealt with for the first time.