A DOCTOR from York has been outlining how military medicine has contributed to patient safety, survival and pain management over the past century.

A session on military medicine took place at the annual congress of the Association of Anaesthetists of Great Britain and Ireland in Harrogate.

Dr Neil Metcalfe, an award-winning general practitioner from York who has a keen interest in medical history, was one of the speakers.

His interest started with his degree dissertation on the role of the military in the development of anaesthesia from 1846 to 1918 and has led to him creating medical history modules at Hull York Medical School and Leeds Medical School.

“One of the greatest, but most unfortunate, ironies in life is how modern medicine owes some of its existence to the deadly cancer of war,” he said.

“The anaesthesia that was being practised at the outbreak of the First World War had not drastically altered from that of the mid-nineteenth century. But the conflict resulted in a number of major developments. For the first time in history, specialist anaesthetist posts were created within the military and that newly focused expertise led to the development of the relatively new concepts of blood transfusion and resuscitation, which were vital for treating casualties suffering from shock.”