Healing the Wounds of War: Nature and the Therapeutic Arts in the First World War Event

Research into rehabilitation practices in response to unprecedented cases of wounds and disabilities during WW1 focuses on retraining and getting men back into work. Occupational therapy and ‘beside’ handicrafts have been overlooked in the scholarship.  This paper will explore the culture of rehabilitation aimed at healing the physical and psychological wounds of servicemen. It examines the role of the haptic senses in occupational therapy and in the vocational retraining of the blind as masseurs and physiotherapists. It will also discuss military patients’ creative responses to the moral pressure to overcome painful wounds and disabilities. Highlighting the popularity of nature in medical and cultural responses to the war, the paper explores the idea that nature provided an imaginative sanctuary that was therapeutic and enabled a degree of ‘soft resistance’ to the brutality of modern industrial warfare and rehabilitation's emphasis on masculine labour as the key to recovery.