What was shellshock in world war 1

He posited that repetitive exposure to concussive blasts caused brain trauma that resulted in this strange grouping of symptoms. There were plenty of veterans who had not been exposed to the concussive blasts of trench warfare, for example, who were still experiencing the symptoms of shell-shock.

And certainly not all veterans who had seen this kind of battle returned with symptoms. We now know that what these combat veterans were facing was likely what today we call post-traumatic stress disorder, or PTSD. The medical community and society at large are accustomed to looking for the most simple cause and cure for any given ailment.

This results in a system where symptoms are discovered and cataloged and then matched with therapies that will alleviate them. Though this method works in many cases, for the past years, PTSD has been resisting. We are three scholars in the humanities who have individually studied PTSD — the framework through which people conceptualize it, the ways researchers investigate it, the therapies the medical community devises for it.

Through our research, each of us has seen how the medical model alone fails to adequately account for the ever-changing nature of PTSD. Once it became clear that not everyone who suffered from shell-shock in the wake of WWI had experienced brain injuries, the British Medical Journal provided alternate nonphysical explanations for its prevalence. Shell-shock went from being considered a legitimate physical injury to being a sign of weakness, of both the battalion and the soldiers within it.

One historian estimates at least 20 percent of men developed shell-shock, though the figures are murky due to physician reluctance at the time to brand veterans with a psychological diagnosis that could affect disability compensation. Soldiers were archetypically heroic and strong. When they came home unable to speak, walk or remember, with no physical reason for those shortcomings, the only possible explanation was personal weakness. Treatment methods were based on the idea that the soldier who had entered into war as a hero was now behaving as a coward and needed to be snapped out of it.

Yealland then applied an electric shock to the throat so strong that it sent the patient reeling backwards, unhooking the battery from the machine. Yealland reported this encounter triumphantly — the breakthrough meant his theory was correct and his method worked. They were betrayed by the stammering and trembling they could not control, the distressing lack of focus, their unmanly depression and lassitude.

No list of clinical symptoms, such as the written records preserve, can do justice to the affliction of the shellshocked patient. This is more effectively evoked in the dreadful medical training films of the war, which capture the discordant twitching, uncontrollable shaking and haunting vacant stares.

But we were all brought up to show good manners, not to upset. Possibly, it was social training, not medical, that enabled Lady Clementine to assist and solace the damaged men who made their way to Lennel.

If she was unsettled by the sights and sounds that filled her home, she does not seem to have let on. That she and her instinctive treatment were beneficial is evident from what is perhaps the most remarkable feature of the Lennel archive—the letters the officers wrote to their hostess upon leaving. A number of the letters are written from hotels while awaiting the results of medical boards. Most hoped for light duty—the dignity of continued service but without the dreaded liabilities. One catches glimpses of them, however, through a variety of oblique lenses.

They crop up in a range of fiction of the era, hallucinating in the streets of London, or selling stockings door to door in provincial towns, their casual evocation indicating their familiarity to the contemporary reader. Officially they are best viewed in the files of the Ministry of Pensions, which had been left with the care of 63, neurological cases; ominously, this number would rise, not fall, as the years passed, and by —more than a decade after the conclusion of the war—there were 74, such cases, and the ministry was still paying for such rehabilitative pursuits as basket making and boot repairing.

An estimated 10 percent of the 1,, military wounded of the war would be attributed to shell shock; and yet study of this signature condition—emotional, or commotional, or both—was not followed through in the postwar years. She died in , by which time the letters and papers of her war service were stored in the Lennel House basement; there may be other country houses throughout Britain with similar repositories.

Lennel House itself, which the family sold in the s, is now a nursing home. Oh it is too cruel after waiting three long weary years for him to come home. A photograph that had been in the possession of Capt. William McDonald before he was killed in action in France, in , and which is now archived in the Australian War Memorial, shows him gathered with other officers on the Lennel House steps, with Lady Clementine.

It rained a heavy storm last night. It is raining off an[d] on today. The weather is warm though. My word the country round here is magnificent, the splendid wheat crops are being harvested Most of the 9. Many survivors experienced acute trauma. Post a Comment. Back indoors, the men were encouraged to write and to produce a magazine with a gossip column called Ward Whispers. Arthur Hurst's son Christopher recalls his father's treatments, "The main work was occupational therapy.

These soldiers, who had been shell shocked, had lost vital faculties, like walking, speaking and so on, were given jobs to do here. My father He cured these cases by means of persuasion and hypnotism. Hurst's pioneering methods were both humane and sympathetic. It was a miracle that literally saved the lives of dozens of shattered men. On bbc. Cornish tea Inside Out goes behind the scenes at Cornwall's tea plantation.

Storm chasers Join the storm chasers in search of Yorkshire's worst weather.. Keep in touch and receive your free and informative Inside Out updates. Subscribe Unsubscribe. We are not adding any new comments to this page but you can still read some of the comments previously submitted by readers. Home Explore the BBC. This page has been archived and is no longer updated.

Find out more about page archiving. Explore the BBC. BBC Homepage England. Inside Out. Contact Us. Inside Out Extra:Wednesday March 3, Hysteria and anxiety Paralysis Limping and muscle contractions Blindnes and deafness Nightmares and insomnia Heart palpitations Depression Dizziness and disorientation Loss of appetite. Many shell shock victims felt shame on their return home, and some were treated as deserters.