Frontline Surgeon: New Zealand Medical Pioneer Douglas Jolly

Douglas Jolly was a gifted and energetic surgeon who performed countless life-saving operations on wounded combatants and civilians during the Spanish Civil War. He developed innovative treatment systems based on the principle of working near the front line and wrote a manual that was widely used in World War II and the Korean and Vietnam Wars. His remarkable career is traced in Frontline Surgeon, an engaging biography that explains and redresses his omission from the ranks of pioneers of modern medicine.

Format: Hardback
Length: 324 pages
Publication date: 01 June 2024
Publisher: University of Nebraska Press

Douglas Jolly, a young doctor, volunteered for the Spanish Civil War in late 1936 and quickly established himself as one of the most gifted and energetic surgeons of the Republican Army's medical services. Over the next two years, he performed countless life-saving operations on wounded combatants from both sides of the conflict, as well as on civilians. Tireless, dedicated, and courageous, he developed significant and innovative treatment systems based on the principle of working as near as possible to the front line. Jolly used this unprecedented battlefield experience to write a manual that was widely used in World War II and the Korean and Vietnam Wars.

Frontline Surgeon traces Jolly's remarkable career from medical training in the 1920s in New Zealand, postgraduate study during the rise of fascism in Europe, almost a decade of frontline surgery, and into civilian life as medical director of Britain's largest hospital for amputees. One of the greatest war surgeons of the twentieth century, Jolly has been mysteriously omitted from the ranks of pioneers of modern medicine. This engaging biography, intensively researched in many countries, both explains and redresses that omission.

Dimension: 229 x 152 (mm)
ISBN-13: 9781496213389