The First World War produced an army of emotionally damaged soldiers who could no longer bear the inconceivable destructive force of modern mechanical warfare. The diagnosis and treatment of mental diseases confronted military psychiatrists with new challenges.
While the war was still raging, a new type of war-related condition was to be seen on the streets of European cities, with its sufferers twitching and trembling as illustration of the inconceivable destructive force of modern mechanical warfare. The condition came to be known as "shell shock".
At the end of the war the world was plagued by a terrible flu epidemic which claimed 25 million victims, many more than had died during the war. Although it did not come from the Iberian peninsula, as often assumed, but probably broke out in America, it is still known today as the Spanish Flu.
Although the danger of epidemics was known, the Austro-Hungarian army was not well prepared at the start of the war to combat classic diseases like typhoid fever, cholera, dysentery, typhoid, smallpox or malaria.
Experience from earlier wars has shown that deaths from epidemics tend to far exceed losses through wounds. In the First World War as well, there were significant fatalities as a result of typhoid fever, dysentery, cholera, typhus, smallpox and malaria.
The development of new weaponry produced novel and medically challenging injuries and diseases.
The enormous number of diseased and wounded soldiers in the First World War made detailed organisation of the medical service at the front and behind the lines essential. The instructions by the Austro-Hungarian army for treating the wounded were contained in the service manual Reglement für den Sanitätsdienst des k.u.k. Heeres.
Doctors were not occupied exclusively with tending the wounded or treating infectious diseases at the front and behind the lines. Their involvement in the army disciplinary apparatus and their participation in the development of new weapons are further aspects that should be recalled.
During the First World War significant advances were made in many medical disciplines, which took advantage of the specific situation to collect scientific information and carry out research.
The atrocities committed against Belgian and French civilians by German troops was a central focus of Allied war propaganda. Pictures of defiled and mutilated women and children were used to justify the war and to mobilise the population of the Allied countries.
