During the years of World War II, physicians showed no less heroism, stamina and courage than soldiers, sailors, pilots, rear workers and officers. Female nurses on their fragile shoulders carried wounded soldiers, the medical staff of the hospitals worked for days, without leaving the patients, the pharmacists did everything possible to provide the front with highly effective drugs in the required volumes. There was no easy post, position, place of work - each of the doctors contributed.
Start of war
The medical service, like the whole army, entered the war in conditions of its sudden start. Many activities aimed at improving medical support and supplies were still largely incomplete. Divisions of the border districts engaged in combat operations with a limited supply of medicines, tools and equipment. The feat of the physicians during the years of World War II, who managed to save the health and lives of fighters and civilians in the most difficult conditions , was all the more significant.
From the first day of the war a tense situation was created both with the supply of active troops and with the production of medical equipment by industry. The main stocks of medications, surgical instruments, dressings concentrated in the border districts did not manage to be transported. Significant amounts of medical equipment were lost that were intended for formed and deployed units and institutions.
Despite the loss of sanitary warehouses, thanks to the heroic work and the incredible efforts of military pharmacists, more than 1,200 wagons of medical equipment were taken out of the surviving warehouses of the front line.
Blood Experience
The hardest year for the country in 1941 ended with the long-awaited first big victory of the Red Army in the grueling battle near Moscow. The feat of physicians during the years of World War II was especially pronounced here. Photos of that period were captured by shots of soldiers rescued from hurricane fire and bombing by orderlies and orderlies. There were frequent cases when medical workers covered the wounded with them, not sparing their lives. Unbiased statistics speak of the intensity of the medical service. During the Moscow battle, a huge amount of medical equipment was expended:
- Only on the Western Front over 12 million meters of gauze.
- The Kalinin and Western fronts consumed more than 172 tons of gypsum.
- Widely used kits "help the wounded," regimental and divisional, which contained the most important medicines, serums, suture materials, syringes. From the front warehouses of the Western Front, 583 regiment sets and 169 division sets were issued to the troops.
The methods of organizing medical supplies in the Moscow battle, summarized at a meeting at the General Military High Command of the Red Army on April 12-15, 1942, made it possible to more successfully provide troops and medical facilities in subsequent operations of the war.
Moscow is behind us!
During the Great Patriotic War, physicians learned to work effectively both in defense (retreat), and in the offensive, and with rapid breakthroughs to a great depth of the front. In many respects, valuable experience was gained with a long stable defense and the subsequent counterattack in the Moscow direction. The battle of Moscow made it possible to adjust the organization of the medical supply of troops in the transition from defensive operations to an offensive operation of a strategic scale.
Even before the start of the defensive battle near the capital, the medical service of the Western and Bryansk Fronts did a great job of putting in order their forces and equipment, which were significantly weakened as a result of heavy losses in the first two months of the war. Particular attention had to be paid to staffing medical units of regiments and divisions with orderlies and orderlies porters.
At the forefront
Numerous facts are known about physicians during the Great Patriotic War who did not spare their own lives in order to endure, dragging, by any means deliver the wounded to the hospital from the battlefield. I had to work under fire, in heat and rain, in mud and snow.
The removal of the wounded in deep snow was especially difficult. Therefore, the most reliable ambulance vehicle, especially during snowstorms and snow drifts, were sledges. Moreover, not only for transporting the wounded to regimental medical posts (PMPs), but often for their evacuation from PMPs to division medical posts. The need to have the appropriate means of strengthening as part of the links of the medical service began to be clearly felt. Horse-sanitary companies included in the medical services were such a tool, which greatly facilitated the rapid evacuation.
Hospitals
Military doctors during the Great Patriotic War tens of thousands worked in hospitals. For example, in the period 1941-1942. in the armies of the Western Front alone, there were 50 mobile field hospitals and 10 emergency towers with a total capacity of 15,000 regular beds. The hospital base of the Western Front was deployed in two echelons in two evacuation directions. The total capacity of the hospital base reached 42,000 beds. At the same time, mainly field medical institutions were deployed in the first echelon, and evacuation hospitals almost exclusively in its second echelon.
The feat of physicians during the years of World War II consisted in their selfless daily work. The main efforts of the medical service were aimed at evacuating the wounded and sick as soon as possible from those areas that were under threat of capture by the enemy, providing medical assistance. A significant number of lightly wounded, as well as moderate wounded, continued to remain in service. Significant sanitary losses suffered by the troops of the Kalinin and Western fronts from the very beginning of the counterattack caused the arrival of at least 150-200 wounded per day, and up to 350-400 on days of intense fighting.
Pharmacies
Doctors during the years of World War II (1941-1945) fought not only at the fronts. Serious problems, sometimes unbearable, delivered the rear logistics of pharmacies with vital medicines. The fulfillment of medical supply tasks was complicated by the fact that an impressive detachment of pharmacists and doctors departed for the army. The number of pharmacists working in pharmacies was halved in 1941-1942.
The systematic supply of pharmacy chains with products, medicines was seriously disrupted: most medical industry enterprises were destroyed or evacuated. With the beginning of the Second World War, military pharmacies were staffed mainly by pharmacists, called upon to mobilize from the stock. Most of them had a secondary pharmaceutical education and never served in the army. A significant part of the employees were women who completed a shortened period of study in pharmaceutical educational institutions. A number of posts in pharmacies were occupied by paramedics.
Particular difficulties were experienced by the heads of military pharmacies, in one person representing all the full-time positions. In addition to professional duties, there were household chores at the pharmacists. They themselves wrote documentation, received medications, sterilized solutions, washed pharmaceutical dishes. Moreover, military requirements for the preparation and use of drugs had to be mastered along the way. The contribution of physicians during the years of World War II was important not only at the forefront, but also in the pharmacy network.
Service example
The history of the Second World War is rich in facts of how the role of one person influenced the fate of thousands. The main burden in saving lives and preserving the working ability of wounded soldiers was taken over by medical surgeons during the years of World War II. Photos of distinguished specialists can be seen in print media, museums, on the Internet. An illustrative example is the outstanding surgeon and organizer Vasily Vasilyevich Ouspensky.
After the occupation of his native Kalinin (now Tver), a talented doctor headed the Kashinsky district hospital. At the same time, he was a surgeon of this medical institution, a consultant to evacuation hospitals deployed in the city of Kashin, neighboring settlements and the regional hospital evacuated to this city. It was he who operated the legendary pilot-hero A.P. Maresyev. At the Kashin hospital, Vasily Vasilievich organized a blood transfusion station and a regional scientific society of doctors.
In 1943, V.V. Uspensky returned to Kalinin, where he organized a special hospital through which more than 3,000 children delivered by aircraft from the enemy rear passed. This children's hospital was known even outside the country. In particular, Mrs. Clementine Churchill, the wife of the British Prime Minister, enthusiastically responded to the ministry of Ouspensky.
Ophthalmologic care
In the battlefields, injuries and eye injuries occurred frequently. Among the wounded soldiers who were being treated, the largest number were patients with shrapnel and bullet wounds of varying severity, requiring surgical intervention. Only in the hospitals of Saratov during the war did the doctors of specialized ophthalmological departments and the clinic of eye diseases helped restore vision to 1858 wounded and 479 patients.
A significant contribution to the development of methods of providing medical care on the battlefield in case of eye injury, as well as the diagnosis and treatment of eye injuries at the hospital stage, was made by employees of the department and clinic of eye diseases, headed by Professor I. A. Belyaev. Saratov doctors during the Great Patriotic War significantly improved the diagnosis and treatment of inflammatory eye diseases, new technologies were introduced into the daily practice of ophthalmologists.
How was the drug shortage solved?
The heroism of physicians during the years of World War II manifested itself in the rear. There was an acute shortage of medical supplies in the country, so the task was to revive the pharmaceutical industry, which was mostly destroyed at the beginning of the war. For a short period of time, the delivery of medications was possible.
This was facilitated by:
- Relocation of a significant number of chemical-pharmaceutical industry enterprises to Central Asia. This led to the creation of the eastern group of the chemical pharmaceutical industry, which took on the bulk of the supply of medicines .
- Help countries anti-fascist bloc. The cooperation allowed the installation of the most powerful plants for the production of streptocide, sulfidine and sulfazole, chloroethyl and pharmacopoeial sodium.
- Reorientation of non-core industrial enterprises. The way out of the situation of the shortage of dressings was facilitated by the textile factories, which began to produce medical gauze. Also, many chemical industry enterprises began to supply ampoule preparations to the health authorities: adrenaline, caffeine, glucose, morphine, pantopon and others.
- Replacing scarce pharmaceuticals with medicinal plants. Only in the spring of 1942 was collected about 50 tons of thirty-six species of medicinal plants. Scientists recreated the method of replacing medical cotton with peat moss-sphagnum and received fir immersion oil instead of the traditional and scarce cedar.
New drug development
Female doctors during the Great Patriotic War made an outstanding contribution to the development of new highly effective drugs. A significant breakthrough was the receipt by the group of Soviet scientists under the leadership of Professor Z. V. Ermolieva of the first samples of penicillin. Ermolieva's research team conducted a study of the therapeutic effect of the new drug “Penicillin-Krustosin VIEM” for wounds and wound complications in medical battalions close to battlefields, in the rear clinics.
The Central Institute of Epidemiology and Microbiology, headed by Professor M.K. Krontovskaya, has mastered the production of typhoid vaccine. The People's Commissariat of Health of the USSR recognized this remedy as effective in the fight against typhus, which was rampant at that time, and decided to use the new serum on a mass scale.
A scientific discovery of world significance was the development by the employee of the Leningrad Institute of Blood Transfusion, Professor L. G. Bogomolova, of the method of freeze-drying plasma. She got the opportunity, not knowing the blood type of the wounded, to transfuse large doses of the drug called "dry plasma" from the donor. With this transfusion method, donated blood turns into a powder that is stored for a long time and well transported.
Feat of Nursing
In World War II, the need for nurses sharply worsened. In accordance with this, the NK Healthcare took up the accelerated training of nurses. Until 1945, the Committee of the Red Cross trained over 500,000 women Sandruzhits, 300,000 nurses, and more than 170,000 doctors. Watching death in the face, they bravely carried the wounded from the scene of the hostilities and helped them.
You can talk about heroic deeds, looking at the fate of the nurse of the battalion of marines Ekaterina Demina. A pupil of the orphanage, she served on the medical ship "Red Moscow", which transported the wounded from Stalingrad to Krasnovodsk. Life in the rear quickly got tired of her; Catherine decided to become a nurse at the 369th Separate Marine Corps Battalion. At first, the paratroopers coolly received the girl, but she won respect. For all the time, Catherine saved the lives of more than 100 wounded, destroyed about 50 fascists, and she herself received 3 wounds. E.I. Demin was noted with many awards.
In the Second World War, the Red Cross successfully coped with the accelerated training of nurses and orderlies, and self-sacrifice, kindness and love for the Fatherland helped medical workers to ensure recovery and return to the front of the wounded. Thus, everything possible was done for the Victory.
Afterword
During the years of World War II, Soviet physicians performed miracles, putting wounded soldiers on their feet. According to statistics, from our hospitals more than 70% of those admitted for treatment returned repeatedly. For example: German doctors managed to return only about 40% of the wounded to the army.