Medicine during World War II underwent several very important advances, advances that led to the saving of thousands of lives. Most importantly were the advancements against bacterial infection and gangrene, some of the worst killers of soldiers during combat.
One immensely important medicine was called sulfanilamide, and it was a powerful antibiotic that was discovered when certain dyes degrade into many products. Sulfanilamides were discovered before the war, however, it was during the war that it became commonplace for soldiers to carry around in their battle packs. Some historians actually claim that the widespread use of sulfanilamides during WWII brought the Allies to victory through all the soldiers’ lives it saved. Another important antibiotic, one more commonly known, was the use of penicillin. Alexander Fleming, the man often associated with the discovery of penicillin, won the Nobel Prize in 1945 along with two other men for their work with penicillin. In the war years, the two other men had engineered ways to extract vast amounts of the drug and issue it out to thousands of troops in the field, allowing them to disinfect their wounds until surgeons could reach them, it often being upwards of 14 hours. Over the course of the war, 400 million doses of penicillin were created.
Painkillers also saw an important advancement, as morphine became a popular tool to ease soldiers out of pain and to calm them down before treatment. Syrettes, a type of injection tool, became popular amongst medical workers, and they would administer doses of morphine with these tools. There was a danger of death if multiple doses were administered to the same patient, however, so medical workers often pinned the used syrette to the collars of soldiers.
One of the most important advancements, however, was the implementation and organization of a blood transfusion system, which utilized the longer-lasting plasma and very efficient organization to be able to get blood to soldiers all over Europe. This was first implemented by the British, but the Americans adopted a blood transfusion organization as well, through the American Red Cross.
The importance of these medical advances cannot be put into words, as they have probably saved thousands, if not millions of lives. And yet, there’s no telling if these advancements and technologies would have been implemented if not for the desperate necessity of war for innovation. Whether these technologies would have even existed without the war is not known. Perhaps there are silver linings even to war.
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