Injuries in World War I

Triage

Triage is one of the most important concepts of battlefield care.   It was probably formulated by Jean Larrey, the chief surgeon of Napoleon’s Grand Armée. Formally, it consists of dividing patients into three categories:
1. Those who will recover with minimal care, or even with no care.
2. Those in whom immediate intervention may be life-saving, and who may die without that.
3. Those who are unlikely to live, regardless of treatment

Triage is a cold concept. It requires abandoning some patients to die, in order to spare resources for those who can be saved with reasonable effort. Civilian medicine is not usually practiced this way, outside of disasters. But on the battlefield, time and resources are finite. Herculean efforts to try to salvage a patient who is likely to die may use time and resources that might better be used to save the lives of several patients less severely wounded.