Seite - 217 - in THE FIRST WORLD WAR - and the End of the Habsburg Monarchy, 1914 – 1918

Wounded, Sick and Dead 217 And there was another problem : Austria-Hungary had not succeeded in establishing its own pharmaceutical industry and was thus largely dependent on imports from the German Empire, with the exception of chloroform, mercuric chloride and bandaging material. As the import was only possible after 24 September 1914, when the import, export and transit bans that also applied to Germany were repealed, a temporary re- striction was decreed for the civilian sector. Then the import was again possible. The pharmaceutical wholesalers admittedly demanded a fifteen per cent supplement to the list price.518 Why shouldn’t they make a profit from the war ? Even though it had been assumed before the war that troop formations that had lost 25 to 30 per cent of their men to death and injury were then no longer capable of com- bat, already in the first year of war, regiments and divisions that had lost more than 50 per cent still remained in the front lines.519 Ways had to be found to deal with injuries that until the war barely had to be treated, above all shots to the head and the stomach. The war was indeed a ‘highly informative teacher’. According to the mobilisation plan, the military medical hospitals had envisaged only 16,708 beds in 191 military hospitals. That was ridiculously few if one looks at the number of wounded and sick in the field armies. Therefore, an almost instant increase in the number of infirmaries and similar facilities had to take place. They were increased bit by bit to 567 and, ultimately, 874 institutions with a total of almost 95,000 beds. A large proportion of the infirmaries behind the front and the clinics across the entire Dual Monarchy were called on for the care of the wounded and the sick in the Impe- rial and Royal Army. In addition, large makeshift infirmaries arose. The fact that the building of the Reichsrat in Vienna served as a reserve military hospital, however, had a more demonstrative character. With this expansion of the military medical and care fa- cilities, it was no wonder that civilian requirements had to increasingly take a back seat. The main focus was on the soldiers. They should, if possible, be healed and redeployed ; everything else was less important. Even the social charitable establishments worked first and foremost for the front. The nursing staff constituted a further shortage in medical care. At the beginning of the war, medical orderlies had only been provided for the permanent infirmaries in the base area. With the ‘army sisters’, who were assigned to the field formations, the field medical hospitals also received helpers and orderlies who were at least surgically trained.520 The bulk of the nurses, however were non-trained women and girls who had volunteered to serve, initially out of enthusiasm for the war, for charitable reasons and ultimately from the necessity to earn their living. Numerous private aid organisa- tions, above all the Red Cross, the Sovereign Military Order of Malta and the Teutonic Knights contributed to the provision and care of the wounded and the sick and also made their infrastructure and facilities available. Each Maltese group had three auto- mobiles, which collected the seriously wounded from front positions.