Egyptians:

Ancient medicine separated the military from it until the Egyptians. The Smith Papyrus was the first written medical text that described surgical procedures. These procedures included advancements in medicine, such as splinting fractured/ broken bones and the cauterization of wounds with either extreme heat or cold to prevent blood loss. Not only did the Smith Papyrus guide medical practitioners on how they should treat different wounds, it also recounted that the medical practitioners were stationed to Egyptian garrison posts.  

 

Babylonian/Assyrians:
The Babylonians and Assyrians first had priests as physicians, but then they developed the first job of being a clinical practitioner for the military. It was full-time and required practitioners to be realistic and not use religion as a form of medicine. The practice of a full-time medically trained practitioner was very rare compared to the military medical organization of other empires (which was non-existent).

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Romans:

The Romans had the closest military medicine to modern day practices. Medical practitioners used public works to have the most successful ancient military medicine. Aqueducts were made for irrigation, sewage systems, and most importantly clean water. Clean water was a big game-changer for the Romans and they used it to develop field sanitation and organized military camps. The camps kept the clean water away from latrines (outhouses) and made sure the excrement went downstream. Most of these camps were not permanent, but the few that were had a separate hospital to treat more wounded. The organization of the camps provided medical corpsmen ("immunes") a casualty chain of command system that was followed. These front-line corpsmen were the first to be soldiers treating wounded soldiers. Despite the advancements in sanitation, where the Romans were the least affected by epidemics and diseases compared to neighboring empires, majority of the Roman soldier deaths were from disease as there was no knowledge of bacteria or immunizations. 

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Middle Ages:

After the fall of the Roman Empire, the Dark Ages (476-1000 CE) fell over Europe. The Dark Ages were a major setback in military medicine. The Byzantine Empire established the feudal system where power over a specific territory was given to lords. The national army was broken up into companies and those companies went with a lord to their territory. Without a large army in one area, the sanitation camps and organized system of casualty care the Romans created was left behind. The lords only had one or two physicians in their retinue, so injured soldiers used those physicians or other soldiers to be treated, which did little help. The significantly smaller armies had smaller scale battles and few injured. Although the medical treatment was severely lacking, the military advancements were strong. All militaries became specialized with the development of new weapons, such as the longbow. The foundations of logistics were established for the military and yet an organized military medical system failed to evolve with the warfare. 

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Early Modern Period:

Medicine continued to go backwards as many reverted back to the Greek humoral theory of medicine. This theory where the fluids of the body determined a person's health. Meaning that there was black bile, yellow bile, blood, and phlegm (mucus from throat and lungs). 

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Ambroise Paré:

A young French barber surgeon, medical practitioner that could amputate, bloodlet, and remove teeth, and then became a battlefield surgeon. Paré reinitiated Roman medicine including their use of ligatures to tie off blood vessels. The reestablishment of Roman practices directly caused the advances in medicine such as Jean Louis Petit inventing tourniquets which was less painful than the cauterization of a wound. Also, forceps were another invention that was used to removes bullets from wounds. Paré became famous for discovering turpentine effectively healed to gunshot wounds of soldiers in both pain and redness/inflammation rather than the use of the usual boiling oil for gunshot wounds that left soldiers in lots of pain. A community of military medicine surgeons was created and Paré was a member. Paré's involvement in the community and his profound treatment of soldiers with new discoveries caused the French government to make military hospitals along the frontier of France. These hospitals allowed significantly more wounded soldiers to be treated and also to train more military medicine physicians.

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John Pringle: 

Soldiers not only sustained injuries from the battlefield, they also battled epidemic diseases like typhus. Pringle published Observations on the Diseases of the Army in Camp and Garrison to hopefully lessen or prevent deaths from the infectious bacteria in future military campaigns. 

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Richard Brocklesby: 

Richard was the Surgeon General of the British Army where he was know for his demands to improve army hospital sanitation. He published Economical and Medical Observations, and they were suggestions to British military command to fix the hospital issues. 

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James Lind: 

Lind is one of the most forgotten in the world of military medicine. He was a part of the British Royal Navy medical care staff. It was from those experiences he wrote An Essay on the Most Effectual Means of Preserving the Health of Seamen in the Royal Navy. Lind stressed the importance of military medicine, and like other physicians during this time period argued that there should be more military medicine for sailors because the numerous deaths on board ships from diseases could possibly be prevented with valuable military medicine on the ship. Higher military command refused to listen to physicians because they were in a position of power and did not need to be told how to do their job by the low ranking physicians. 

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John Hunter: 

Hunter was and Army Surgeon and then a staff surgeon that transformed surgery from a manual craft to experimental science by applying the scientific method in surgeries. Modern day medicine follows Hunter's application process in surgeries method to keep improving medicine. 

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Napoleonic Wars: 

Dominique Jean Larrey was the French hero and also the Surgeon in Chief of Napoleon's armies. Larrey was the closest to a modern day battlefield surgeon and established triage which categorized injuries and their respective levels of urgency of medical attention. But, his most notable invention was the "ambulance volante" or the flying ambulance. This was a system of horse carriages that evacuated the wounded away from the battlefield. The carriage ambulances contained medical corpsmen and stretcher-bearers to perform the initial treatment of the wounded. The horse carriages took the wounded to hospitals a few miles away from the battlefield where surgeons like Larrey performed surgeries on the wounded. One biggest military fails of all time was the Napoleon's Invasion of Russia in 1812. 600,000 French soldiers and 800 military physicians traveled to Russia but they encountered starvation, cold, typhus, diarrhea, and pneumonia on their way there. Only 50,000 soldiers and 300 physicians survived. The power hungry leaders did not care about anything but defeating Russia including the major loss of soldiers. Larrey stepped up at this time and treated all the ill and wounded he could. He also went after higher command insistently to make sure he could get the best treatment for the soldiers. The French people saw Larrey as a hero despite the losses because he did all he could for injured soldiers even if the end result was a lost cause. 

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