Outlander's Diana Gabaldon On Setting World War II As Claire's Backstory — cinemablend.com

This is a question that applies to the book and the series as well, as Ronald D. Moore's adaptation includes this very relevant piece of Claire's story. Diana Gabaldon answered this question so thoroughly that I wanted to share it in its entirety. This is what she said when I asked why she chose World War II and the 1940s as Claire's time: And so I was thinking a little more primitive. At the same time, I wanted her to be empathetic with the modern mindset insofar as medicine went. That is to share our assumptions and knowledge as to germ theory and things like that. Well, there's three basic pillars that modern medicine rests on, and that's antisepsis -- which is germ theory -- antibiotics and anesthesia. And if you have all of those three, it's cognizant to a modern mind. That's what we all assume we know. And I looked back through history. Well, all of those things were actually discovered either in the late nineteenth century or the early twentieth century. But all three of them came into common use in the general population during World War II, because of their use in the battlefield.

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