Diorama showing a First World War field dressing station

Made:
1979 in Reading
Diorama of Great War front with sectioned field dressing Diorama of Great War front with sectioned field dressing Diorama of Great War front with sectioned field dressing

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License this image for commercial use at Science and Society Picture Library

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Diorama of Great War front with sectioned field dressing
Science Museum Group Collection
© The Board of Trustees of the Science Museum

Diorama of Great War front with sectioned field dressing
Science Museum Group Collection
© The Board of Trustees of the Science Museum

Diorama of Great War front with sectioned field dressing
Science Museum Group Collection
© The Board of Trustees of the Science Museum

Stylised diorama of a First World War (1914-1918) frontline dressing station, made in Reading, England, 1979.

The scene shows a familiar sight during the First World War (1914-1918), injured soldiers being carried by stretcher bearers from a dressing station towards ambulances that will take them to casualty clearing stations further behind the front line. Other wounded men sit around waiting for attention. Within a makeshift operating theatre, a surgeon is depicted using a kitchen table as an operating table while his instruments are being sterilised using an autoclave heated by a small portable stove. Although a stylised and conflated version of frontline medical units, this diorama capture some of the busy chaos that would have been encountered by medical teams during and after a battle on the Western Front. Mobility and flexibility were key characteristics of medicine near the frontline and medical and surgical equipment had to be light enough to be transported to wherever it was needed.

The First World War was fought using industrialised weaponry that had devasting impacts on the bodies of soldiers, with artillery, bullets and poison gas causing a range of often highly complex wounds. Such was the scale of the conflist that across all fronts, sixty-five million troops fought of which over nine million were killed and nineteen million were wounded.

Details

Category:
Therapeutics
Object Number:
1986-1497
Materials:
wood (unidentified), paint, textile, metal (unknown) and plaster
Measurements:
overall (viewing aperture): 670 mm x 630 mm x 2353 mm,
overall (with structure): 947 mm x 630 mm x 2480 mm, 114 kg
type:
dioramas
credit:
Charley's Art (College Road)

Parts

Lighting components for diorama showing a First World War field dressing station

Lighting components for diorama showing a First World War field dressing station

Lighting components from a stylised diorama of a First World War (1914-1918) frontline dressing station, made in Reading, England, 1979.

Object Number:
1986-1497/2
type:
component - object