Eleanor Soltau (1877–1962) was an English doctor who led the first unit of the Scottish Women's Hospitals for Foreign Service in Serbia.

[4] Walker and Soltau published on treatment by artificial pneumothorax, a form of lung collapse therapy, in the BMJ in 1913.

[14] The following February, at a meeting of the Association of Registered Medical Women, Soltau showed how two patients with advanced phthisis (tuberculosis), a woman and a man, had been treated effectively by artificial pneumothorax at Maltings Farm Sanatorium.

[15] An advert for the three Nayland sanatoriums in the new Postgraduate Medical Journal in 1926 offered "treatment of Pulmonary And Other Forms Of Tuberculosis.

"[12] Soltau was in charge of young tuberculous cases at the sanatorium and commented on treatment by artificial pneumothorax in children in her care in the British Journal of Tuberculosis.

[16] In 1934 she reported in the BMJ on 46 cases of children who had pulmonary tuberculosis treated by artificial pneumothorax at Nayland, dating back to 1912.

[17] Soltau was among those who applied to help the war effort under the auspices of the Scottish Women's Hospitals for Foreign Service, whose first unit left for France in November 1914.

"[19] The resulting outbreak of typhus "flowed over Serbia like a flood ... more than a quarter of the Serbian doctors died, and two-thirds of the remainder had the disease."

[19] Common Cause, organ of the National Union of Women's Suffrage Societies, wrote in May 1916: "To Dr. Soltau's everlasting credit, she took over, with her small staff and, for such an increase of work, her inadequate equipment, No.

As well as victims of disease the unit had to deal with injured men from Valjevo who arrived "in a row of bullock-carts" one morning.

"[22] Soltau reported: "The newly arrived doctors and nurses, inured to all manner of human suffering and more or less prepared for working under bad conditions, were struck dumb by the horror of it all.

It is a strange, dark, gruesome time to look back on; but one marked by many brave deeds and much unrecorded heroism.