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Lifesavers and Body Snatchers
- Medical Care and the Struggle for Survival in the Great War
- Narrated by: John Fleming
- Length: 11 hrs and 41 mins
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Publisher's summary
*WINNER OF THE 2023 OTTAWA BOOK AWARD*
*SHORTLISTED FOR THE 2022 TEMPLER MEDAL FOR BEST BOOK*
From Canada’s top war historian, a definitive medical history of the Great War, illuminating how the carnage of modern battle gave birth to revolutionary life-saving innovations. It brings to light shocking revelations of the ways the brutality of combat and the necessity of agonizing battlefield decisions led to unimaginable strain for men and women of medicine who fought to save the lives of soldiers.
Medical care in almost all armies during the Great War, and especially in the Canadian medical services, was sophisticated and constantly evolving. Vastly more wounded soldiers were saved than lost. Doctors and surgeons prevented disease from decimating armies, confronted ghastly wounds from chemical weap-ons, remade shattered bodies, and struggled to ease soldiers’ battle-haunted minds. After the war, the hard lessons learned by doctors and nurses were brought back to Canada. A new Department of Health created guidelines in the aftermath of the 1918–1919 influ-enza pandemic, which had killed 55,000 Canadians and millions around the world. In a grim irony, the fight to improve civilian health was furthered by the most destructive war up to that point in human history.
But medical advances were not the only thing brought back from Europe: Lifesavers and Body Snatchers exposes the disturbing story of the harvesting of human body parts in medical units behind the lines. Tim Cook has spent over a decade investigating the history of Canadian medical doctors removing the body parts of slain soldiers and transporting their brains, lungs, bones, and other organs to the Royal College of Surgeons (RCS) in London, England. Almost 800 individual body parts were removed from the dead and sent to London, where they were stored, treated, and presented in exhibition galleries. After being exhibited there, the body parts were displayed in Canada. This uncovered history has never been told before and is part of the hidden legacy of the medical war.
Based on deep archival research and unpublished letters of soldiers and medical personnel, Lifesavers and Body Snatchers is a powerful narrative, told in Cook’s literary style, which reveals how the medical services supported the soldiers at the front and forged a profound legacy in shaping Canadian public health in the decades that followed.
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Critic reviews
SHORTLISTED FOR THE 2022 TEMPLER MEDAL FOR BEST BOOK
One of:
The Globe and Mail’s “64 books to keep you warm as the weather cools”
The Toronto Star’s “5 books for a Remembrance Day reading list”
“[S]hocking. . . . [H]eartbreaking. . . .” —Ottawa Citizen
“Cook has an unrivaled mastery of the archival sources and reveals [in Lifesavers and Body Snatchers] for the first time the program of harvesting body parts from fallen soldiers for medical study.” —Toronto Star
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Performance
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On April Fourth, 1945, United States Army units from the 89th Infantry Division and the Fourth Armored Division seized Ohrdruf, the first of many Nazi concentration camps to be liberated in Germany. In the weeks that followed, as more camps were discovered, thousands of soldiers came face to face with the monstrous reality of Hitler's Germany. These men discovered the very depths of human-imposed cruelty and depravity.
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loved it
- By A. Adams on 10-11-20
By: John C. McManus
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My Fellow Soldiers
- General John Pershing and the Americans Who Helped Win the Great War
- By: Andrew Carroll
- Narrated by: Andrew Carroll
- Length: 11 hrs and 32 mins
- Unabridged
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Andrew Carroll's intimate portrait of General Pershing, who led all of the American troops in Europe during World War I, is a revelation. Given a military force that on the eve of its entry into the war was downright primitive compared to the European combatants, the general surmounted enormous obstacles to build an army and ultimately command millions of US soldiers. But Pershing himself - often perceived as a harsh, humorless, and wooden leader - concealed inner agony from those around him.
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Don’t pass this up
- By PineappleSmoothy on 03-29-18
By: Andrew Carroll
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The Facemaker
- A Visionary Surgeon's Battle to Mend the Disfigured Soldiers of World War I
- By: Lindsey Fitzharris
- Narrated by: Daniel Gillies
- Length: 8 hrs and 15 mins
- Unabridged
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From the moment the first machine gun rang out over the Western Front, one thing was clear: mankind’s military technology had wildly surpassed its medical capabilities. Bodies were battered, gouged, hacked, and gassed. The First World War claimed millions of lives and left millions more wounded and disfigured. In the midst of this brutality, however, there were also those who strove to alleviate suffering. The Facemaker tells the extraordinary story of such an individual: the pioneering plastic surgeon Harold Gillies.
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My favorite author
- By Dani on 06-07-22
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Eleventh Month, Eleventh Day, Eleventh Hour
- Armistice Day, 1918 World War I and Its Violent Climax
- By: Joseph E. Persico
- Narrated by: Jonathan Marosz
- Length: 17 hrs and 1 min
- Unabridged
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The best-selling author of Roosevelt's Secret War traces the last day of World War I, weaving together the experiences of the famous, such as President Wilson, General Pershing, and Douglas MacArthur, and the unsung and unremembered.
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Beauty amidst savagery
- By Amazon Customer on 12-06-04
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A Storm in Flanders
- The Ypres Salient, 1914-1918: Tragedy and Triumph on the Western Front
- By: Winston Groom
- Narrated by: David Baker
- Length: 10 hrs and 5 mins
- Unabridged
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Novelist and prizewinning historian Winston Groom's gripping history of the four-year battle for Ypres in Belgian Flanders, the pivotal engagement of World War I that would forever change the way the world fought - and thought about - war. This is Groom's account of what would become the most dreaded place on Earth.
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I love, love, love this book!
- By Amazon Customer on 08-16-16
By: Winston Groom
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Hell and Good Company
- The Spanish Civil War and the World It Made
- By: Richard Rhodes
- Narrated by: Christian Coulson
- Length: 8 hrs and 36 mins
- Unabridged
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The Spanish Civil War (1936-1939) inspired and haunted an extraordinary number of exceptional artists and writers, including Pablo Picasso, Joan Miro, Martha Gellhorn, Ernest Hemingway, George Orwell, and John Dos Passos. The idealism of the cause--defending democracy from fascism at a time when Europe was darkening toward another world war--and the brutality of the conflict drew from them some of their best work.
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Awkward approach to a civil war
- By sabas on 01-17-17
By: Richard Rhodes
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The Unknowns
- The Untold Story of America’s Unknown Soldier and WWI’s Most Decorated Heroes Who Brought Him Home
- By: Patrick K. O'Donnell
- Narrated by: Dan Woren
- Length: 12 hrs and 54 mins
- Unabridged
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Brilliantly researched and vividly told, The Unknowns is a timeless tale of heeding the calls of duty and brotherhood and humanizes the most consequential event of the 20th century, which still casts a shadow a century later. Celebrated military historian and best-selling author Patrick O'Donnell illuminates the saga behind the creation of The Tomb of the Unknown Soldier and recreates the moving ceremony during which it was consecrated.
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The Unknowns
- By Logophile on 05-09-19
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Total War
- From Stalingrad to Berlin
- By: Michael Jones
- Narrated by: Simon Shepherd
- Length: 10 hrs and 48 mins
- Unabridged
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The powerful story of the Red Army's battle of liberation against the Nazi invader - from Stalingrad all the way to Berlin. In February 1943, German forces surrendered to the Red Army at Stalingrad, and the tide of war turned. By May 1945 Soviet soldiers had stormed Berlin and brought down Hitler's regime. Total War follows the fortunes of these fighters as they liberated Russia and the Ukraine from the Nazi invader and fought their way into the heart of the Reich. It reveals the horrors they experienced.
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Excellent history, great narration, worth it
- By Colin on 08-29-18
By: Michael Jones
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MASH: An Army Surgeon in Korea
- By: Otto F. Apel JR. M.D., Pat Apel
- Narrated by: Dr. Bill Brooks
- Length: 9 hrs and 2 mins
- Unabridged
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When North Korean forces invaded South Korea on June 25, 1950, Otto Apel was a surgical resident living in Cleveland, Ohio, with his wife and three young children. A year later he was chief surgeon of the 8076th Mobile Army Surgical Hospital, constantly near the front lines in Korea. Immediately upon arriving in camp, Apel performed 80 hours of surgery. His feet swelled so badly, he had to cut his boots off, and he saw more surgical cases in those three and a half days than he would have in a year back in Cleveland.
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MASH and the Korean War
- By Angie on 08-29-17
By: Otto F. Apel JR. M.D., and others
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Bellevue
- Three Centuries of Medicine and Mayhem at America's Most Storied Hospital
- By: David Oshinsky
- Narrated by: Fred Sanders
- Length: 14 hrs and 41 mins
- Unabridged
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David Oshinsky, whose last book, Polio: An American Story, was awarded a Pulitzer Prize, chronicles the history of America's oldest hospital and in so doing also charts the rise of New York to the nation's preeminent city, the path of American medicine from butchery and quackery to a professional and scientific endeavor, and the growth of a civic institution.
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Fascinating
- By Jean on 12-14-16
By: David Oshinsky
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Somme
- Into the Breach
- By: Hugh Sebag-Montefiore
- Narrated by: Roy McMillan
- Length: 19 hrs and 46 mins
- Unabridged
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No conflict better encapsulates all that went wrong on the Western Front than the Battle of the Somme in 1916. The tragic loss of life and stoic endurance by troops who walked towards their death is an iconic image which will be hard to ignore during the centennial year. Despite this, this book shows the extent to which the Allied armies were in fact able repeatedly to break through the German front lines.
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A gentle look at a horrific subject
- By J Beachboard on 02-27-17
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The Great Influenza
- The Epic Story of the Deadliest Plague in History
- By: John M. Barry
- Narrated by: Scott Brick
- Length: 19 hrs and 26 mins
- Unabridged
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In the winter of 1918, at the height of World War I, history's most lethal influenza virus erupted in an army camp in Kansas, moved east with American troops, then exploded, killing as many as 100 million people worldwide. It killed more people in 24 weeks than AIDS has killed in 24 years, more in a year than the Black Death killed in a century. But this was not the Middle Ages, and 1918 marked the first collision between modern science and epidemic disease.
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Great book but very disturbing...
- By Tim on 01-15-09
By: John M. Barry