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[WWI PARAMEDICS] Rukovodstvo dlia rotnykh feldsherov i feldsherovskikh uchenikov [i.e. The guidebook for squadron paramedics and paramedic students]

Baranov, A.I.

Item #2217

18th edition with 254 drawings in text. St-Petersburg: Trud, 1916 [wrapper – 1917]. 368 p.: ill. 21x14 cm. Original cardboard binding. Binding is rubbed, the tear of the spine, good internally. Three stamps on the title page: ‘Approved by the Wartime Censorship’, ‘American YMCA’ and St. Simeon Church library in Calistoga, CA.

The 18th and one before the last edition of the book, that was a handbook for Russian paramedics during the WWI. The next year the final edition was printed, 19th. The first edition came out in 1897.
Military paramedics were specialists with secondary medical education in pre-revolutionary Russia. They provided first aid on the battlefield and in peacetime. They could independently carry out diagnosis, primary treatment and refer to a specialist. The book was being reprinted especially actively during the First World War - six editions in three years. During Soviet times, the book was not reprinted.
The author of the textbook, Alexander Ivanovich Baranov (1864 - ?), was a military doctor in the guards units stationed in Tsarskoe Selo, the main summer residence of the emperor. He worked in the infirmary at the Tsarskoye Selo Palace Hospital.
The publication outlines the basics of the anatomy of the human body, a basic course of surgery, methods of providing first aid and treating military wounds and injuries, injuries received in accidents, assistance with various types of infection, infectious diseases, poisoning, epidemics, etc. Knowledge of a new discipline at that time - bacteriology - is actively used. The textbook is interesting due to its depth of study and breadth of topics covered; it also presents epidemic diseases that have become rare today.
In the section on hygiene the separate chapter is dedicated to drinking and smoking, which starts with the premise ‘Usually people we have drink beer and vodka’ and ends with the phrase ‘The opinion, that alcohol could lift up a person and give one strength, is a false one, if one considers close observations on this matter’.

Rare, as all wartime manuals of a kind.

Price: $450.00