The film draws on the story of an actual soldier named Fritz Niland and a U. War Department directive Food, gas and clothing were rationed.
Communities conducted scrap Her experiences as a nurse during the Crimean War were foundational in her views about sanitation. Beyond their goal of crushing Italian Axis forces, the Allies wanted to draw German troops away from Dorothea Lynde Dix was an author, teacher and reformer. Charged during the Clara Barton is one of the most-recognized heroes of the American Civil War. She began her illustrious career as an educator but found her true calling tending wounded soldiers on and off bloody Civil War battlefields.
When the war ended, Barton worked to identify missing and Few medical doctors have been as lauded—and loathed—as James Marion Sims. In , he was named president of the American Medical Some , women served in the U.
Meanwhile, widespread male enlistment left gaping holes Live TV. This Day In History. By , the military medical professions of all combatant armies were developing ways of managing mentally wounded soldiers. Given the nature of war neurosis it is difficult to estimate accurately the numbers of men that were affected. There were over 80, recorded cases amongst the British armies on the western front ; estimates amongst German troops range from ,, and the number of French troops affected was similar or possibly higher.
As a result the history of First World War shell shock is broad and includes the history of mental trauma per se , the history of shell shock as a specific military medical condition and its social and economic consequences, and the history of shell shock as an emblem or a metaphor for the war and its aftermath.
The recognition of Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder PTSD in prompted historians and medical experts to situate modern trauma in its historical context. In Britain there has long been an extensive historical, political and cultural interest in shell shock. Yet to understand early 20 th century war psychiatry we need to abandon this teleological narrative and focus instead on the political, economic and cultural debates of Wilhelmine Germany because it was the social legislation of the Second Reich which meant that neurotic soldiers were treated in the same way as injured industrial workers.
A number of historians have recently incorporated the psychologically wounded into the wider medical history of the First World War, yet there has been no European survey of the history of shell shock.
The focus is on the soldiers of the primary combatant nations on the western front because although men were traumatised in all areas, the conditions on the western front were unique, being characterised by highly industrial, intensive and static trench warfare. In consequence, the type of "mental cases" seen on the western front were not replicated in all sectors.
The first mental casualties appeared after the Battle on Mons in and they portrayed a baffling range of symptoms: tics, trembling, functional paralysis, hysterical blindness and deafness, speech disorders ranging from stuttering to mutism, confusion, extreme anxiety, headaches, amnesia, depression, unexplained cramps, fainting and vomiting.
It had long been understood that strong nerves would be required to fight a modern industrial European war. Wilhelm II, German Emperor had declared that victory would go to the nation with "strongest nerves" — yet many German doctors believed that war would provide "cathartic front experiences" that would actually strengthen enfeebled, degenerate modern men. In retrospect doctors were able to argue that the First World War produced "no new symptoms". Lieutenant Colonel Charles Myers anthropologist and consulting psychologist to the British Expeditionary Force first publicly used the term "shell shock" in The Lancet in February Consequently, British medical and military authorities tried in vain to proscribe the term and to find a suitable alternative.
In Medical Officers were instructed to label possibly traumatised men as NYDN Not Yet Diagnosed Nervous but throughout the war, and afterwards, men continued to be described as "shell-shocked" and a wide range of other terms were used too: hysteria, neurasthenia, hybrid hystero-neurasthenia, nerve shock, war shock, war neurosis, exhaustion. The Italians referred to shock da esplosione emphasising the importance of the physical shock.
Thomas Salmon, who had been commissioned to observe the British treatment of shell shock for the US army, commented that "it is doubtful if there is another group of diseases in which more confusion in terms exists.
War psychiatry does not develop in isolation from civilian psychiatry and throughout the war military psychiatry drew from concepts in the civilian world where there had been much medical investigation into mental trauma since the late 19 th century.
The violence of the modern , industrial world was provoking anxiety long before the outbreak of the First World War. Passengers and workmen involved in railway accidents often suffered from odd symptoms such as partial paralysis, headaches, backache, dizziness and loss of memory, none of which seemed directly related to the initial impact or physical shock.
While it was accepted that "railway spine" could be explained by damage to the central nervous system, there was also some debate about the extent to which it had been caused by "fright alone". In George Beard , an American physician and neurologist, used the term to describe patients suffering from a range of physical and mental symptoms such as headaches, impotence, anxiety, paralysis, neuralgia, depression and loss of memory.
He attributed neurasthenia to the nerve damage caused by the strain of modern, highly competitive, urban life. A modified version of this cure was later adapted to treat British officers during the First World War. Railway spine and neurasthenia affected men and women alike but hysteria has traditionally been considered a specifically female complaint.
In France , the acclaimed neurologist Jean-Martin Charcot published widely on traumatic hysteria, indicating that it was not a malady appertaining only to women and to effete men: his male patients were workers, artisans and peasants.
In addition, psychiatrists had their own political and professional aims, and many doctors were enthusiastic about the professional opportunities offered by the war.
German doctors thought of the war as a great "experiment", similarly their French counterparts saw it as "a grandiose laboratory experiment". First, men were not always treated by mental-health specialists, especially in the early stages of the war.
In addition, doctors continually complained about the difficulty of collecting statistics, monitoring cases and maintaining dialogue with colleagues. Yet the belief that only fit societies would survive was combined with growing fears that relentless trench warfare was producing a dis-eugenic war, one in which the least fit were destined to survive. This provoked already entrenched fears of "pension neurosis" or even outright fraud. The practical arrangements for shell-shocked casualties varied across sectors and developed in response to the exigencies of warfare and to the professional goals of the medical profession.
British and German troops were initially sent home for treatment but the French — fighting on their own territory — were less able to send men away from the firing lines and so developed treatment centres closer to the front. All neurological cases were directed to the forward centres in the first instance because specialists wanted to deal with mental complaints before they became intractable.
The military command was initially hostile but forward treatment soon became standard practice amongst the western allies. The German armies continued to send troops back to Germany where they were generally treated in large hospitals although work-based therapies were developed in Germany from Moran eventually concluded that all men had a limited stock of courage and that "men wear out in war like clothes" but not all medics agreed.
The relationship between serving soldiers and their medical officers is not always straightforward. Doctors can be seen as the humane, civilising face of warfare: the International Red Cross had organised medical care so as to humanise warfare and some pacifists, while eschewing military combat, accepted military medical service.
As a result, soldiers from the other ranks were often hostile to medical officers and this hostility was especially rife in cases of war neuroses where a neurologist, psychiatrist or even a doctor without specialist training could withhold treatment rights, deny a pension or sanction disciplinary action.
For these reasons men in the trenches often tried to avoid sending a mentally wounded man to see a doctor. In a British soldier in the trenches was stricken dumb with fear. 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.
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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.
Its true cause, prolonged exposure to the stress of combat, would not be fully understood or effectively treated during the war. Doctors diagnosed almost 10, Canadians with shellshock during the war. Medical treatment ranged from the gentle to the cruel.
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