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Trench foot was an informal name applied to the condition from its prevalence during the trench warfare of World War I. [1] Health officials at the time used a variety of other terms as they studied the condition, but trench foot was eventually formally sanctioned and used. [2] Informally, it was also known as jungle rot during the Vietnam War. [5]
Trench foot was a large problem for the Allied forces, resulting in 75,000 British and 2,000 American casualties. [62] Mandatory routine (daily or more often) foot inspections by fellow soldiers, along with systematic use of soap, foot powder, and changing socks, greatly reduced cases of trench foot. [63]
New trenches collapsed as they were dug and the front and support lines were held by shell-hole posts, which became islands of squalor. Duckboards and ration boxes used as platforms sank under the mud; cooking became impossible and movement in daylight suicidal. There were epidemics of dysentery, trench foot and frostbite; old wounds opened.
Illness increased in the British armies. Routine measures to prevent trench foot, by rubbing feet with whale oil and donning dry socks, reduced the number of cases compared to 1915, despite the increase in the size of the BEF. Combined frostbite and trench foot admissions to hospital in 1916 were 16,955 men against 22,718 the year
The 1917 Trench Boot was an adaptation of the boots American manufacturers were selling to the French and Belgian armies at the beginning of World War I. In American service, it replaced the 1912 Russet Marching Shoe. The boot was made of tanned cowhide with a half middle sole covered by a full sole, studded with five rows of hobnails. [1]
Before World War II, the events of 1914–1918 were generally known as the Great War or simply the World War. [1] In August 1914, the magazine The Independent wrote "This is the Great War. It names itself". [2] In October 1914, the Canadian magazine Maclean's similarly wrote, "Some wars name themselves. This is the Great War."
Immersion foot syndromes are a class of foot injury caused by water absorption in the outer layer of skin. [1] [2] There are different subclass names for this condition based on the temperature of the water to which the foot is exposed. These include trench foot, tropical immersion foot, and warm water immersion foot.
Along with other trench diseases such as trench foot and trench fever, trench nephritis contributed to 25% of the British Expeditionary Force's triage bed occupancy and was the major kidney problem of the First World War. [2] [8] The condition led to hundreds of deaths and 35,000 British and 2,000 American casualties.