Illustration credits to Luke Carroll

When faced with the pressures of modern medicine, it can be easy to forget the human stories behind our patients. In my first summer of medical school, I had the rare privilege of stepping back into history to receive a stark reminder of the ways in which illness can extend far beyond disease and how, as medical professionals, it’s our responsibility to honour both the illness and the patient. In 1940, during the Second World War, St. Hugh’s College was transformed into a military hospital dedicated to treating British soldiers with head injuries. During this time, roughly 13,000 patients were treated. Decades later, I was lucky enough to work with the original records from the hospital to investigate the long-term outcomes of these veterans who had suffered traumatic brain injuries. The records included firsthand accounts of soldiers’ injuries, surgical notes from mobile frontline teams and physician progress notes.

For some, the records also contained follow-up reports that traced how their lives unfolded over the following decades. These questionnaires, which invited patients to return to Oxford to be re-examined, were sent periodically up to forty years after their initial treatment in the 1940s. They aimed to capture the full picture of recovery and the long-term effects of traumatic brain injury, from cognitive and neurological function to psychological well-being and social assimilation

At the end of the questionnaires, there was a comments section in which patients could freely discuss their experiences. Reading these comments felt like reaching across time to witness a world that feels very different to our own, yet echoes the same struggles we face today. Some respondents wrote words of encouragement, whilst some gave updates on their progress and others wrote about the hardships that they had experienced.

One letter that stood out came from a veteran’s wife, who tirelessly cared for her husband through the frequent (what we would now call intrusive) flashbacks he suffered. She had filled out the follow-up questionnaire without her husband’s knowledge as he was unconvinced that anything could help and had refused to respond to the letter himself. By sending back the questionnaire, she was quietly reaching out on his behalf, an act of courage and devotion. Her words did not call for pity. Instead, they were an expression of love and a fragile hope that another visit to Oxford for re-examination might, after all these years, bring her husband some relief.

Another came from a veteran who had struggled to find hope after being discharged, describing his “outlook on the future” as being “very poor”. Nevertheless, despite being in a depressed state and struggling with poor memory, he described himself as a “disciplinarian”. He was determined to force himself to live a normal life, reflecting that “to a certain extent I succeeded”. His story was an inspiring reminder of something medicine can encourage, but never ensure—the will to keep going.

I came to the archive at St. Hugh’s expecting to study a condition, but left with the reminder that behind every diagnosis is a person with a story. When reading these letters, it was impossible not to be moved by the weight of the experience they contained, just a glimpse into the thousands of lives documented in these records. The hospital itself no longer stands, but the human stories remain.