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Feature of the Month - June 2009
The 1654 edition of Nicolas Culpeper’s Pharmacopoeia Londinensis Image will open in a new window Enlarge image

The original version of the Esmarch bandage (also known as Esmarch's bandage for surgical haemostasis or Esmarch's tourniquet) was designed by Friedrich von Esmarch (1823 - 1908), professor of surgery at the University of Kiel, Germany, for use on the battlefield to control bleeding in injured soldiers.
It consisted of a three-sided piece of linen or cotton, the base measuring 4 feet and the sides 2 feet 10 inches. It could be used folded or open, and applied in thirty-two different ways.

As a junior surgeon serving in the Schleswig-Holstein War of 1848 Esmarch became interested in military surgery. He was later appointed as surgeon to a field hospital, and, on the fresh outbreak of war, was promoted to the rank of senior surgeon.

In 1854 Esmarch became director of the surgical clinic at Kiel, and in 1857 head of the general hospital and professor at the University of Kiel. During the Schleswig-Holstein War of 1864, Esmarch served at the field hospitals of Flensburg, Sundewitt and Kiel. In 1866 he was called to Berlin as member of the hospital commission, and also to supervise the surgical work in the hospitals there. At the outbreak of the Franco-Prussian War in 1870, Esmarch was appointed Surgeon-General to the German army, later becoming consulting surgeon at the great military hospital near Berlin.

The Royal Society of Medicine holds a rare example of an Esmarch bandage. Enclosed with Esmarch's 1869 book on military first aid, Der erste Verband auf dem Schlachtfelde, the bandage is illustrated with a battlefield scene depicting soldiers wearing the Esmarch bandage to demonstrate its various methods of application.

The Esmarch bandage will be on display as part of the RSM Library's forthcoming exhibition of books illustrating the history of military and naval medicine from the sixteenth to the nineteen century.

The exhibition is entitled "He Who Wishes to be a Surgeon Should Go to War", and is scheduled to run from 8th June - 14th August 2009.


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