War and the Production of Knowledge: The Technologies of Triage and the Restructuring of American Military and Medical Institutions during and after the First World War David J. Caruso Department of Science and Technology Studies Cornell University
Intellectual Merit Soldiers do not own their bodies: their bodies belong to the state. When a soldier becomes injured during wartime, military medical personnel are trapped in the position of serving two masters: they are responsible for the health of the soldier as well as the health of the military establishment. Military and medical personnel were forced to come to an agreement about how to treat injured soldiers throughout the First World War. The soldier became the site of conflict between two different institutions, each of which had its own forms of knowledge production and its own conceptions of, and requirements for, that knowledge. By examining the technologies of triage-the process of sorting, categorizing, and treating injured and ill soldiers-and the conflict that arose between military and medical personnel over how soldiers should and would be classified, this project will enhance our understanding of the transformations that occurred in the American military and medical institutions during and after World War One. More generally, the project will demonstrate the effects that inter-institutional settings have on the production of knowledge.
This NSF grant will provide the opportunity to visit archives in the United States in order to investigate the first-hand accounts of soldiers practicing and receiving medical care during wartime. Such research will allow for assessment of the ways in which science, in the form of medicine, was practiced and how technologies were used in inter-institutional settings. Those conditions promoted new discoveries and innovations that could then be adapted for use by military and medical institutions separately. This project will offer insights into the ways in which military and medical practices and goals had to be adapted to allow for cooperation between the representatives of each institution.
Broader Impacts Such work will shed light on the way that science (medicine) is practiced when in the service of two powerful political institutions. Much attention has been paid to the ways in which science interacts with other powerful, formalized institutions like the law, as well as to the ways that powerful institutions like the military can influence scientific goals. But neither of the above-mentioned cases deals with science being developed and practiced under the watchful gaze of another institution's authority.
