Walter B. Cannon and Surgical Shock

Photograph of John Fraser and Walter B. Cannon, October 1917

Gifts of the Estate of Dr. Walter B. Cannon to the Library of Harvard Medical School, 1945

Soon after his arrival in France with Base Hospital No. 5, Walter B. Cannon was joined to group of surgeons with the B.E.F. at Casualty Clearing Station No. 33 in Béthune, to study the effects of traumatic shock in association with war wounds.  He worked during the summer and fall of 1917 with Captain John Fraser.  In the following year, Cannon was put in charge of a surgical research laboratory at Dijon under the A.E.F. where he continued to study shock and ways to treat it and taught medical officers who in turn served in hospitals at the front.