But these were the first armies to benefit from the use of antiseptics, from mass inoculation programmes, and from an understanding of bacteriology. In wars before that of 1914-18 disease, not battle, was the major killer. On the western front it was not - a product of major advances in preventive military medicine as well as of the fact that it was wounds which introduced many of the more life-threatening infections. Disease was still a principal cause of death in every other theatre of war.
