Richard A. Gabriel and Karen S. Metz have completed this unique two-volume work: the first published comprehensive history of military medicine in the Western world. This second volume begins with the Renaissance, the occasion of the Western rebirth of the empirical habit of inquiry that made possible the eventual development of scientific medicine. The volume continues with studies of the increasingly sophisticated art of military medicine as it developed from the slaughter pens and amputations of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries to the first effective medical care systems developed in the nineteenth century. The rise of modern military medicine in the twentieth century is then analyzed by Gabriel and Metz up until the close of the Vietnam War.

Numerous instances of cross-national transfer of information and practices are reflected in the organization of the second volume, which still does not lose sight of the fact that, until very modern times, the various national efforts at providing military medical care remained essentially unique. Volume II concludes with an overview of the emergence of military medicine, a bibliography, and a general subject index. These volumes will be of considerable use to students and scholars alike in the disciplines of world history, military studies, and medical history. It is hoped that the Gabriel-Metz undertaking will stimulate an intensive re-examination of the course of military medical history.