Today@Dal

If a wounded soldier in the First World War made it past clearing stations at the front lines, he might have found himself at a hospital run by Halifax's Dalhousie University.

That hospital is the subject of a new book, No. 7 Canadian Stationary Hospital (Dalhousie University) in WW I, written by Des Leddin, a gastroenterologist and professor at Dalhousie's medical school.

No.7 Hospital was mobile, Leddin said. The medical unit acted as a midpoint between the front lines and hospitals back in Canada.

It travelled from Halifax to different towns in England and France, spending over a year in the northern French village of Arques, close to the front.

While stationed in Arques, the hospital's volunteers were immortalized by a portrait that now hangs in London's Imperial War Museum. The King also visited, Leddin said.

Despite that, working in the hospital would have been a sobering experience.

The contradictions and consequences of the war must have been obvious to the hospital's 170 volunteers, although the mortality rate was lower in hospitals than on the front lines, Leddin said. The doctors, nurses and support staff came from towns and villages across Nova Scotia.

Read More: http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/nova-scotia/dalhousie-university-hospital-book-1.3308199