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Before “Geneva” Law: a British surgeon in the Crimean War
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 23 November 2010
Extract
It is well known that modern “Geneva” international humanitarian law has its origins in the impartial rescue and relief work undertaken by Henry Dunant in June 1859 for the wounded soldiers abandoned on the battlefield at Solferino and the proposals made thereafter in his book “A Memory of Solferino”. Henry Dunant's initiative led to the establishment of the International Red Cross Movement and the conclusion of the initial Geneva Convention for the Amelioration of the Condition of the Wounded and Sick in Armies in the Field, signed in 1864. These humanitarian developments were, by 1859, sorely needed. The first half of the nineteenth century had seen an increase in the scale of warfare and with it a combination of incapacity and unconcern in relation to the wounded and war victims in general.
- Type
- Contribution to the History of Humanitarian Ideas
- Information
- International Review of the Red Cross (1961 - 1997) , Volume 35 , Issue 304 , February 1995 , pp. 69 - 80
- Copyright
- Copyright © International Committee of the Red Cross 1995
Footnotes
*
This article is based upon documents held in the Wrench Collection in the University of Nottingham Library Department of Manuscripts. The assistance of the staff of the Department is gratefully acknowledged.
References
1 E.M. Wrench, “The lessons of the Crimean War”, offprint from theBritish Medical Journal, 22 July 1899, p. 1.
2 Original letter preserved in the Wrench Collection at the Department of Manuscripts and Special Collections, University of Nottingham Library.
3 Henry Dunant, “A Memory of Solferino”, 1862, published in English translation by the American National Red Cross, 1959, p. 31.
4 Ibid., p. 2.
5 Sandoz, Y., Swinarski, C., Zimmermann, B. (eds.), Commentary on the Additional Protocols of 8 June 1977 to the Geneva Conventions of 12 August 1949, ICRC, Martinus Nijhoff, Geneva, 1987 Google Scholar, referring to Article 10 of 1977 Additional Protocol I.
6 Original letter preserved in the Wrench Collection at the Department of Manuscripts and Special Collections, University of Nottingham Library.
7 E.M. Wrench, op.cit., p. 8.
8 Wrench Collection, University of Nottingham Library.
9 The account of a Russian field hospital in 1812, during the Napoleonic Wars, given by Leo Tolstoy in his novel “War and Peace”, Book X, Ch. xxxvii, emphasizes the unavoidable horror of battlefield surgery in that era.
10 This seems to have been a large hut built by Wrench himself. The Diary includes a drawing of this structure as a substantial one- or two-room dwelling.
11 Undated entry in Wrench's summary of events at the beginning of his Diary for 1856.
12 Henry Dunant, op.cit., (note 3), p. 30.
13 E.M. Wrench, op.cit., (note 3), p. 6.
14 E.M. Wrench, Diary for 1855, summary of events referring to 22 March 1855.
15 Wrench Collection, University of Nottiningham Library.
16 Pictet, Jean, Development and principles of international humanitarian law, Martinus Nijhoff, 1985, p. 25 Google Scholar.
17 Wrench Collection, University of Nottingham Library.
18 Ibid.
19 EM. Wrench, op. cit., (note 1), p. 8.