The International Sanitary Service (ISS) and the Innovations in Mobile Hospitals and Auto-Chirs During the Spanish Civil War, 1936–1939

The chapter offers an unexplored explanation about the spread of medical innovations in the Spanish Civil War, through the International Brigades. When the Spanish Civil War clashed in July 1936, international medical volunteers from more than thirty countries came to Spain to collaborate in the Republican front. Most of them worked in the International Sanitary Service (ISS), the organization that assisted the International Brigades. Brasó Broggi analyses how the ISS integrated new technologies and know-how, fostering medical innovations. The improvement of the auto-chirs, automobiles with surgical equipment, the management of mobile hospitals and some new medical techniques reduced the time span between the wound and the treatment and opened the scope to heal cases that had been considered helpless. The international milieu and blurred hierarchy of the organization favoured medical experimentation and the further dissemination of knowledge.