History shows that medical advances are often driven by extreme circumstances such as war.

The BBC is reporting the remarkable progress and performance of the British Army's medical services in war zones.

"More British servicemen were seriously injured in Afghanistan in the first nine months of 2007 than in the whole of the rest of the present conflict.

Grim as that fact is, many of those so-called "catastrophic" wounds would have been fatal in previous wars.

Even as recently as five years ago many would not have returned home alive, the head of battlefield medicine for the armed forces says. "

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