The Wellcome Library has many paintings and photographs of the First World War. Apart from its effects on other countries, the War transformed Great Britain in many ways: the changes in women's roles, the loss of a generation of young men, and the development of surgical radiography, to name but three. The Wellcome pharmaceutical company scaled up enormously its production of vaccines and antitoxins for the armed forces, and Henry S. Wellcome was keen to collect documents recording the war, among them this painting. It was painted by Cyrus Cuneo, an American-born war artist who worked in London. It shows stretcher-bearers rescuing wounded soldiers from the trenches. Many of the stretcher-bearers were conscientious objectors, and were employed not by the army but by the Red Cross.