Army medic George Lott, wounded in both arms in November, 1944, grimaces as doctors mold a cast to his body. When Lott embarked on a 4,500-mile, seven-hospital journey of recovery, photographer Ralph Morse — astonished by the high level of medical care wounded troops received both at the front and behind the lines — traveled with him, and chronicled Lott's odyssey in a revelatory cover story for LIFE.
Medecins Sans Frontieres / HO / AFP
Medics from Doctors Without Borders offer their services on April 16, 2011, in Libya, where NGOs are preparing for a potential mental-health crisis
Spencer Platt / Getty Images
People suffering from the symptoms of cholera lay on the floor at a hospital run by the Haitian government where Doctors Without Borders is treating people October 27, 2010 in St. Marc, Haiti. Haiti, one of the poorest nations in the Western Hemisphere, has been further unsettled by an outbreak of cholera which has so far killed nearly 300 people as of Tuesday.
Joe Raedle / Getty
Doctors at the Mexico City Navy Hospital treat a patient complaining of swine flu-like symptoms on April 29.
Eduardo Verdugo / AP
Doctors stand inside the Mexico City naval hospital as patients wearing masks stand in line to be treated
Wolf Hoffmann for TIME
Doctors implant Essure coils to create scar tissue that blocks Fallopian tubes.
Ted Horowitz / Corbis
Doctors perform arthroscopic surgery on a patient's knee.
James Estrin / The New York Times / Redux
Doctors at New York-Presbyterian/Columbia Hospital receive lungs from a potential donor.
ROBBIE MCCLARAN FOR TIME
"They are young," she says of her doctors. "They don't understand the pains of the elderly."
—LILLIAN SULLIVAN
Retired Oregon bookkeeper with ALS
Schalk van Zuydam / AP
An unidentified child reacts as he is weighed at a field hospital of Medecins Sans Frontieres (Doctors Without Borders) in the town of Dadaab, Kenya.
Not originally published in LIFE. Doctors work on body cast of wounded American Army medic George Lott, 1944.
Not originally published in LIFE. Doctors work on body cast of wounded American Army medic George Lott, 1944.
Peter van Agtmael for TIME
Valentine Filipov's eyes follow a mirror during a test doctors used to confirm he has retained some level of consciousness.
James Wojcik for TIME
Restricting calories extends animal life, so doctors want to know if going hungry would help us too.
JACQUELINE LARMA/AP
UNLIKELY ACTIVISTS: Doctors protest high malpractice jury awards and insurer premiums at an April rally in Abington, Pa.
WILSON CHU/REUTERS
Global Warning: WHO Doctors Meirion R. Evans, left, and James Maguire at a Beijing news conference
ANTON DENISOV/ITAR-TASS/AP
Two doctors remove the body of a slain female hostage in Moscow
STUART RAMSON/AP
Doctors examine a mammogram
EUGENE RICHARDS FOR TIME
BRUCE TEIGEN:
Telling his doctors to end his treatments gave him, at last, a
feeling of peace
AP
"Doctors Without Borders" has won the Nobel Peace prize
George Lott, 22, wounded in both arms by German mortar fire, suffers as doctors mold a plaster cast to his body, 1944.
George Lott, 22, wounded in both arms by German mortar fire, suffers as doctors mold a plaster cast to his body, 1944.
Ramon Espinosa / AP
A woman holds her sick child as he receives treatment for cholera at a Doctors Without Borders, MSF, cholera clinic in Port-au-Prince, Haiti, Oct. 19, 2011.
Hasan Jamali / AP
A medical worker speaks with a colleague receiving treatment at Salmaniya Hospital in Manama, Bahrain after doctors said he was allegedly beaten by Bahraini police.
National Archives / Newsmakers / Getty Images
The Tuskegee study in the 1930's halted care for black men with syphilis so doctors could study the disease.
STR New / Reuters
Deformed fetuses at Ho Chi Minh City's Tu Du Hospital, where doctors blame the high incidence of deformities on the use of Agent Orange during the war
Ian Nicholson / PA / AP
Heartworks, the first fully functioning virtual heart to help train cardiologists and doctors
KAREL PRINSLOO / AP
Mothers wait with their children who are under observation to see if they have cholera, at a Doctors without Borders clinic, Monday, Nov. 10, 2008 in Kibati just north of Goma in eastern Congo
AP
In this Sept. 26, 2007 file photo Luc Montagnier, one of the doctors who helped first isolate the HIV virus, poses with a golden crown of laurels awarded to him in Sofia, Bulgaria
Laura Kleinhenz for TIME
More women like Chung, with son Nathan, are requesting caesareans, and doctors believe the trend will only increase.
CHRIS USHER FOR TIME
The Veterans Administration Medical Center now features portable rolling computer tables that give doctors real-time access to patients' records, X-rays and other visuals as they make their rounds.
LOU LINWEI FOR TIME
Registration at Beijing's No. 309 Hospital. Doctors say up to 40 SARS patients may have been moved from their wards
VNA
COURAGE UNDER FIRE:
Captured after ejecting, left, and mistreated by Vietnamese
doctors, below, McCain came back with a broken body, and still
walks with a slight limp
John Dominis—Time & Life Pictures/Getty Images
"His hands were a mess -- he was bleeding," says Dominis, recalling the nasty blisters McQueen developed on the first day of the race. With no doctors around, the actor made a stop at a grocery store in Pearblossom, Calif., where the owner did his best to fix him up.
JULIAN ABRAM WAINWRIGHT
SURVIVOR: Avian flu victim Nguyen Sy Tuan holds an X-Ray of his lungs. At one stage, doctors prematurely declared him dead
“The most serious health problem in the U.S. today is obesity.” Sounds familiar, doesn’t it? In fact, that very assertion is now so commonplace that one might be...
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