War's Waste

In World War I America, disabled soldiers became known as "war’s waste,” refuse left in the wake of modern warfare. Emboldened by their faith in the ability of the new social and medical sciences to solve problems of economic and cultural inefficiencies, progressive reformers believed that the government could (and should) "rebuild war cripples” through programs of physical rehabilitation. Beth Linker brings to vivid life the physical consequences of war by examining maimed soldiers and the medical professionals who set up programs for their recovery. She reveals how, over the course of WWI, the campaign to rehabilitate injured soldiers gained widespread appeal among reformers and policy makers, which translated into the creation of the Veteran's Bureau in 1921 (later the VA) and policies that continue to affect disabled soldiers today.
After the Civil War, the U.S. government provided pensions for injured veterans and a lifetime of medical care in soldiers’ homes, which allowed them to withdraw from the labor market. The WWI-era rehabilitation campaigns instead sought to get disabled soldiers back to work despite their injuries through what was often depicted as a kind of remasculinization process. The rise of orthopedics, physiotherapy, prosthetics, and the modern army hospital are seen here for the first time as part of an ideological and policy backlash against the costly Civil War veterans pension system. This story is compellingly told from the point of view of politicians, reformers, physicians, therapists, and the wounded soldiers themselves.