From his medical experiences in South Africa, Kurdistan, Mozambique, and Eritrea, the author reflects on the nature of human violence, the contradictions of war, and the role of medicine in the modern world.

"When Jonathan Kaplan began his medical studies in Cape Town, the prospect of political change in South Africa seemed remote. A police attack on a student demonstration bloodied his hands for the first time, and Kaplan realized that he was seeing the effects of politics on the health of the patients he examined as part of his studies. And as a young doctor, through the terror and exhilaration of his first solo operation - on a victim of police gunfire - came the knowledge that he would be a surgeon." "Since his early days treating the casualties of apartheid in Cape Town, Dr. Kaplan has saved (and lost) lives in the remotest corners of the world under the most extreme conditions. The Dressing Station is a brilliant and gripping narrative that reveals the crucial work of field doctors all over the world, and the devastating realities of the zones of conflict in which they operate." "A hospital surgeon, a ship's physician, an air-ambulance doctor, and a trauma surgeon, Dr. Kaplan has worked in locations as diverse as England, Burma, Eritrea, and Amazon, Mozambique, and the United States. He has operated on wounded straight off the battlefield, treated obscure tropical disease, and helped victims of corporate stress and industrial poisoning. Running medical research programs in high-tech laboratories or caring for children wasted by famine and war, he has seen his skills used and sometimes abused. And throughout, he has faced one great challenge - to maintain his humanity even when that option does not seem possible."--BOOK JACKET.