title: Mapping the war: gender, health, and the medical profession in France and Germany, 1914-1918.
abstract: This article compares the gender and health politics of the German and the French medical professions, which incorporated military command structures into their civilian self-conception. Mobilized doctors committed themselves to the new circumstances and opportunities offered by the war. They applied the established military spatial 'map' which distinguished between the male-dominated front and the female-dominated home front and turned it into an epidemiological map, identifying danger zones which arose from points of contact between men and women. The analysis singles out two case studies: the rapid spread of venereal disease and psychiatric disorders. These case studies allow for a comparative analysis of the following questions: How did doctors assess the impacts of the war on the individual and the society as a whole? How did they view the war's impact on conventional gender orders, individual and national health? And how did they see their own role as a part of an independent civilian profession?
authors.affiliation: a Institute for History, Philosophy and Ethics of Medicine , Johannes-Gutenberg University , Mainz , Germany.
authors.forename: Susanne
authors.initials: S
authors.lastname: Michl
mesh_terms: D003130:Combat Disorders / Q000266:history; D005260:Female; D005602:France; D005858:Germany; D049673:History, 20th Century; D006801:Humans; D008297:Male; D008887:Military Medicine / Q000266:history*; D012749:Sexually Transmitted Diseases / Q000266:history; D047828:World War I
keywords: France; Germany; gender and medical practices; medical profession; psychiatry; the First World War; venereology