[JumpCrisscross]

> Improved health care is what allowed nations to create and maintain larger military forces

Isn’t it the other way? With a lot of medicine’s modern advances being rooted in combat medicine?

[wat10000]

I think they mean communicable diseases, not combat injuries. For example, around 2/3rds of the military deaths in the American civil war were from disease, not combat. I don’t think much of the medical advances that prevent that came from combat medicine.

[JumpCrisscross]

> don’t think much of the medical advances that prevent that came from combat medicine

Triage and ambulances come from battle medicine [1]. (Not sure about communicable-disease prevention.)

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dominique_Jean_Larrey

[wat10000]

Right, those are relatively minor improvements compared to soldiers no longer dying en masse from typhoid, smallpox, measles, etc. Good improvements to be sure, but not quite as significant.