61st Historia Medica Lecture and Exhibit Opening with Archivist Philip Skroska

And We Won't Come Back Till It's Over, Over There

On Thursday, Feb. 22, Philip Skroska, visual and graphic archivist at Becker Medical Library, will give the 61st Historia Medica Lecture, “And We Won’t Come Back Till It’s Over, Over There,” on Base Hospital 21, Washington University Medical Center’s response to World War I.

The lecture will be held at 4:30 p.m. in the King Center on the seventh floor of Becker Library. A reception with drinks and appetizers will immediately follow in the Glaser Gallery on the same floor, where Skroska’s new exhibit on Base Hospital 21 will open for viewing.

Base Hospital 21 was an Army medical unit organized at Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis – the result of a plan begun in 1916 by the American Red Cross and the War Department to prepare a number of base hospitals from existing medical schools and hospitals so that if the United States should enter the war, fully equipped hospital units complete with physicians, nurses, and supplies would be ready for active service. Washington University School of Medicine faculty and students, as well as Barnes Hospital staff and nurses, volunteered for the unit, which deployed to Rouen, France with the American Expeditionary Forces for the duration of the war.

Base Hospital 21’s doctors and nurses became leaders championing new techniques for more efficient and effective treatment of wounded soldiers and making X-rays safe for field work.

The lecture and reception are presented by Bernard Becker Medical Library and the Center for History Of Medicine. This event is free and open to the public.

Read more about the exhibit from the St. Louis Post-Dispatch and Washington University in St. Louis.