Base Hospital No. 5

Harvey Cushing (1869-1939) 
The Story of U.S. Army Base Hospital No. 5 / by a Member of the Unit
(Cambridge [Mass.,] : University Press, 1919)

Gift of Dr. George C. Shattuck to the Library of Harvard Medical School, 1953

Harvey Cushing published this historical account of Base Hospital No. 5 soon after the war's end.  The page displayed reproduces a photograph of the visit of Queen Mary with Colonel Robert U. Patterson in July 1917.  

The full text of Cushing's history is available in the Medical Heritage Library at: https://archive.org/details/39002011122562.med.yale.edu

In the last days of May, Base Hospital No. 5 personnel arrived at Camiers and took charge of No. 11 General Hospital, adjoining the Harvard Surgical Unit at No. 22.  Over 3000 sick and wounded patients were treated during the first month of activity.  On August 1, there were 964 admissions in a single day, following the opening of the Third Battle of Ypres. By war's end, over 45,000 British and American sick and wounded patients had been treated at Base Hospital No. 5. 

Both Harvey Cushing and Elliott Carr Cutler published historical accounts of Base Hospital No. 5, and it was Cushing who declared it to be

One of the first Units of the American Expeditionary Force to be sent overseas; it was the first to suffer casualties at the hands of the enemy; its period in France was nearly two years, as long as that of any other United States Army Base Hospital; its list of publications on subjects relating to medical problems of the war was a most creditable one, and its standards of efficiency and loyalty were second to none.