The Physician's Role in the Postattack Period

Abstract

MANY monographs and articles^{1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8} have been written to acquaint physicians with the medical problems that might follow a thermonuclear attack on this nation. Often, these articles rely on experience with previous disasters — for example, the New England hurricane of 1938, the Coconut Grove fire of 1942, the Texas City explosion of 1947, the fire bombing of Hamburg in 1943 and especially the nuclear bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki in August, 1945.⁹ To reason from these models to thermonuclear war, however, is to make the assumption that the problems of H-bomb warfare will be quantitatively greater, but qualitatively similar to . . .