what you can do with a biscuit box and a piece of x-ray film …
Toronto.. … to skin a cat (sorry cat lovers) was an expression when I was a kid. It meant that a problem often had more than one solution. During the Great War (WW1), a Canadian hospital (McGill hospital) was set up in Dannes-Camiers, France. As very young scholars, each fall we were taught McCrea’s poem “In Flanders Fields“. Dr McCrea was a surgeon in the McGill field hospital in France.
Canada’s History magazine featured an article on that hospital in its Oct/Nov 2022 issue. Authors Tim Cook and Kate Raiment wrote an article titled, “A Great Machine of Healing“. In EBSCO’s New Hampshire teacher resources linked above (5th article down), the abstract reads, “The article focuses on First World War surgeon John McCrae [who] served in McGill University‘s acclaimed field hospital in France. It mentions Canadian Army Medical Corps (CAMC) had expanded from twenty officers in 1914 to over twenty thousand members and caregivers in uniform[. They] were a vital part of the war machine, engaging in preventive care to stop disease from decimating the armies. It also mentions Canada in the war’s aftermath to better aid the public health of all Canadians.”
There was a “no photographs” policy at the hospital during WW1 but some wags used a clever way to circumvent the rule as you can see here. Pin hole photography? Perhaps. Once again a big vote of thanks goes to photo-historian George Dunbar for discovering this thoughtful article about McGill, Dr McCrea, and WW1.
