The image of war in Finland's medical journals

This article deals with the image of war as expressed in Finnish medical periodicals from the year 1849 till the creation of IPPNW at the beginning of the 1980s. Medical science has served the building up of our national state, and has focused on the acute injuries or diseases of the soldiers that reduced their combat effectiveness. The civilian population, the adversary and the long‐term effects of war are hardly mentioned in the publications. The subject of nuclear weapons appeared in the periodicals in 1954, but in the 1960s and 1970s they were mainly still non‐nuclear. Prevention of war was not mentioned.