For instance, it explains that one reason McIndoe's techniques were revolutionary was that previous to WWII, anyone burned as badly as many of these men would have died within hours or days, and so reconstructive surgery for those sorts of injuries was a moot point. This was the period when doctors were figuring out how to treat shock, which meant that all of a sudden, people were surviving with wounds that previously would have killed them. And then doctors had to figure out what to do to help them then. (Incidentally, the issue of what to do with people with previously non-survivable injuries is still ongoing, and there have been conceptual breakthroughs in how to treat shock/blood loss just in the last ten years - also due to war. It's the quintessential mixed blessing.)

God I love (by which I mean find deeply fascinating) this element when it comes to medicine/etc. Because it's really so true and so applicable/important, and so poorly understood often by mainstream ideas about medicine.