Forged by Fire: Burns Injury and Identity in Britain, c.1800-2000

在过去的两个世纪里，英国人经历了涉及烧伤和烫伤的个人和集体悲剧，这些悲剧与英国文化和社会有关，并植根于家庭，工作场所，战争和游戏的习惯和设计。这个项目将探讨烧伤如何塑造身份：个人，城市和群体。在19世纪的英国，烧伤的死亡率为50%。在1900年至1950年期间，每年有10万人被烧伤和烫伤，其中2万至3万人被送往医院，2,000人死亡，其中一半以上是儿童。今天，烧伤占所有A&E访问的175，000人。有16，000人住院; 300人（2%）死亡。从表面上看，这是一个进步的故事，但在某些方面，这只是肤浅的。与公共卫生的其他方面不同，烧伤预防方面的进展甚微。根据烧伤先驱伦纳德科尔布鲁克博士在1950年的说法，这些统计数据反映了英国人特有的习惯：喝茶，在家中生火，以及广泛使用易燃的、蓬松的棉花。意义不仅归因于原因，而且烧伤的物质文化，从改变燃料到塑造我们生活方式的技术，也与英国历史更广泛年表中关键时刻的现代意义有关。对于紧急服务，新出现的危险意味着汇集信息和制定对策，为新的更安全的家园和工作场所的设计和建设提供信息-本项目将研究这些决定是如何达成的。虽然烧伤事件影响了救护车和消防服务的专业化，但人们对他们在协调救生和治疗方面的作用知之甚少。此外，鉴于许多救护车服务在世纪初（包括我们的三个城市）从市政消防队演变而来，这两种服务都已经成熟，可以进行比较审查，以更好地了解它们作为紧急情况第一反应者的共同作用。除此之外，治疗的重点已经从19世纪40年代的复苏和隔离转移到19世纪90年代的感染控制和休克预防，以及20世纪40年代的重建，每次转移都会为烧伤团队引入新的专家。第二次世界大战后，随着死亡率的显著下降，烧伤医生的最终目标也从生存转变为完全康复和心理康复。尽管取得了这些进展，烧伤仍然是一种视觉上明显的，感官上的攻击和情感上的压倒性伤害，对移动性，自我和身份有重大影响。它们对心理健康也有重要影响，不仅对受伤者，而且对那些参与消防救援和烧伤治疗的人。烧伤被认为是可怕的和标志性的。自焚尤其会刺激我们的集体和情感反应，但也可能激励人们。2010年，穆罕默德·布阿齐兹自焚，抗议突尼斯警察的待遇。在这样做的过程中，他被认为是阿拉伯之春及其黑暗觉醒的人类火花。事实上，烧伤很少只是个人悲剧。他们可以激发集体行动，就像他们在1981年新十字火灾之后所做的那样，这场火灾夺去了13条年轻人的生命，并被认为有助于创造一个黑人英国身份。1987年的国王十字车站火灾是伦敦地铁发生的第一起致命火灾，造成31人死亡，100人受伤。它改变了伦敦交通网络的健康和安全法规，并导致了愈合基金会（1999年）的成立，这是一个为烧伤患者工作的慈善机构。最近成立的支持团体表明，烧伤的经历更具集体性和安慰性，但我们对“烧伤受害者”的文化形象仍然是一个孤独、悲惨和神秘的人物--哈弗舍姆小姐和人体自燃。

Throughout the past two centuries, Britons have experienced personal and collective tragedies involving burns and scalds, which have been connected to British culture and society and rooted in the habits and design of home, workplace, war and play. This project will investigate how burns have shaped identity: individual, urban and group. In 19th-century Britain, the mortality rate for burns injuries was 50%. Between 1900 and 1950, of an annual 100,000 burnt and scalded people, 20-30,000 were admitted to hospital; 2,000 died - over half were children. Today, burns injuries make up 175,000 of all A&E visits. There are 16,000 hospitalisations; 300 (2%) die. On the surface, this is a story of progress, yet in some ways this is just skin deep. Unlike other aspects of public health, there has been little progress in burns prevention. According to burns pioneer Dr Leonard Colebrook in 1950, these statistics reflected peculiarly British practices: tea drinking, open fires in homes, and widespread use of inflammable, raised-nap cottons. Not only is meaning attributed to the causes, but the material culture of burns, from changing fuels to the resultant technologies that shape how we live, is also tied into what being modern meant at key moments in the wider chronology of British history. For emergency services, emerging hazards meant pooling information and devising countermeasures, informing the design and construction of new, safer homes and workplaces - this project will examine how these decisions were reached. While burns incidents have influenced the professionalisation of ambulance and fire services, little is known about their roles in co-ordinating life-saving and treatment. Moreover, given that many ambulance services evolved out of municipal fire brigades in the early 20th century (including our three cities), both services are ripe for comparative scrutiny to better understand their joint roles as first responders to emergencies. Alongside this, priorities around treatment have shifted from resuscitation and isolation in the 1840s, when the first 'burns unit' was established in Edinburgh (1845), to infection control and shock prevention in the 1890s, and reconstruction in the 1940s, each shift introducing new specialists to burns teams. Gradually, as mortality rates began to fall noticeably after the Second World War, the ultimate goal of burns practitioners also changed from survival to full rehabilitation and psychological recovery.Despite this progress, burns remain a visually distinct, sensually assaulting and emotionally overwhelming injury, with significant effects on mobility, the self and identity. They also have a significant bearing on psychological wellbeing, not only of the injured, but those involved in fire rescue and burns treatment. Burns are felt to be horrific and iconic. Self-immolation in particular jars our collective and emotional response, but might also inspire people. In 2010, Mohamed Bouazizi set himself on fire in protest at police treatment in Tunisia. In doing so, he has been said to be the human spark for the Arab Spring and its darker wake. Indeed, rarely are burns just individual tragedies. They can galvanise collective action, as they did following the 1981 New Cross fire, which claimed 13 young lives and is recognised as having helped create a Black British identity. The 1987 King's Cross fire was the first fatal fire on London underground, and killed 31 people and injured 100. It transformed health and safety regulations in London's transport network and led to the founding of the Healing Foundation (1999), a charity working for people who have sustained burns injuries. The recent establishment of support groups suggests a more collective and consoling experience of burns, yet our cultural image of the 'burns victim' remains that of a solitary, tragic, and mysterious figure - of Miss Haversham and spontaneous human combustion.