War and medicine
The Wellcome Trust is one of the world's largest medical charities, spending more than GBP600 million (HK$6.76 billion) a year to promote research into the health of both humans and animals.
Based in London, the Trust also houses the Wellcome Collection, initially amassed by Sir Henry Wellcome in the late 19th century.
The collection is hosting a number of multimedia events through February 15 as part of its War and Medicine exhibition, which examines the effects of armed conflict upon soldiers, civilians and surgeons throughout history.
As befits Wellcome's global reach, it makes liberal use of the internet to reach an audience far beyond its London home.
These mix first-hand accounts by doctors, nurses and civilians on the frontline with public information films dating back to the second world war.
The first two examples are drawn from recent conflicts: artist David Cotterrell speaks about his experiences in military hospitals in Afghanistan that inspired his installation Theatre; Vicky Treacy, a nurse with Medecins Sans Frontieres, recalls the period she spent working in Darfur. Both Cotterrell and Treacy speak candidly but calmly about the often horrific violence they witnessed, illustrating their recollections with moving images and photographs.
For Cotterrell, seeing the war up close - first in a field hospital in Camp Bastion and later in more rudimentary facilities near the frontline - only complicated his understanding of the current conflict. Treacy also focuses on the primitive nature of the care she could provide.
It is debatable which is the more heartbreaking: the patients she treats after bullet wounds or brutal rape, or those destined to die from diabetes or asthma.
Other films are drawn from sites such as YouTube and the excellent internetarchive.org. Arguably the most memorable example is a Journeyman Film production called The Ugly of War, featuring a young American Medevac crew chief, Sergeant Schacht. His memories are both honest and harrowing: he recollects his 'cowardice' at being unable to look at a young Iraqi girl as she lay dying in his helicopter.
What emerges with stark clarity is the toll war takes on civilians, soldiers and hospital staff alike: one moment Schacht calls his job the best in the world, the next he remembers his anger against the enemy, the army and the US.
Juxtaposed with this film is Saving Lives in World War Two, in which a now elderly medic recalls his work over half a century ago. Returning home, his mother asked him what difference he could possibly have made. The medic replied that he was sent to save lives, not destroy them.
The final three videos on the War and Medicine website are public information films from the mid-20th century that offer medical advice on how to survive a massive catastrophe.
Despite their impressively high production values (the director of Survival Under Atomic Attack clearly knows Citizen Kane inside out), these short bursts of cold war propaganda now seem ridiculous, to say the least. In the event of nuclear war, one narrator calmly reminds us, 'There is no need for fear and panic', shortly before images of mushroom clouds fill the screen.
