Shell Shock Diagnosis

[Yankeedave]

There some murky depths to how cw vets or any vets handled and or were handled post war. Twenty one vets a day kill themselves so this is still a problem.
i have one question. Union vets were handed drugs as they left. Did the ones taken during the war numb them to the horrible experiance going in and in some measure fix themselves beforehand?

 

[James B White]

To kind of repeat what others are saying, I've wondered if doctors saw soldiers with certain symptoms, and they were trying to figure out how to diagnose them, just assuming they must be seeing symptoms caused by physical trauma. So what could cause such symptoms? Well, perhaps the brain was damaged as in a concussion. So they reached for that explanatino.

Meanwhile, doctors were seeing other symptoms expressed by passengers in major railroad accidents, and they needed to find an explanation for those. Along came railroad spine. Check out the link behind my words "railroad spine" back there--very interesting connection to shell shock. Again, there was the problem that not everyone was actually injured in exactly the same way--though a WWI soldier surely felt a shell blast at some point in the trenches. But it was easy to assume that the railway injured people in strange new ways unlike what had happened before, because it was strange and new form of transportation.

But until reading that wikipedia article, I didn't realize there was a connection between whiplash in cars and railroad spine. I just thought that railroad spine (unless there was an actual spinal injury) was PTSD, and whiplash (unless there was an actual neck injury) was somebody trying to get money from an insurance company, but now I don't know what to think. Are people with PTSD from car injuries (and wartime shells and peacetime explosions and railroad crashes) properly diagnosed now, and others with real injuries properly diagnosed also? Are there still people with PTSD/whiplash still not properly diagnosed. Ouch.

But anyway, my point is, I think like some others here that doctors were trying to find physical injuries from shell explosions first, and sometimes seeing physical injuries, but in the days before Xrays, CT scans and MRIs, nobody could be sure. Then later there was an understanding that sometimes it was psychological, sometimes physical, and of course sometimes (probably most of the time) there was both a physical and psychological component. I was just reading some old family stories about a Civil War vet and apparently he couldn't stand the sound of popcorn popping. Sent him into a cold sweat, the first few pops, the pauses, then more and more pops as the battle started in earnest. I'd read it briefly years ago, and every time I heard a skirmish at a reenactment, all I could think of was popcorn, and vice versa, hearing popcorn start to pop.

 

[lelliott19]

I've thought that, too - that it was a phenomenon of modern warfare, new weaponry. Much more terrifying to be killed straight out of the blue!

I agree with others who posted above, that the "shock by shell" diagnosis most likely referenced the results of physical trauma, but its amazing there wasn't really any true recognition of the psychological impact. Once entrenching became prevalent it had to have been much more terrifying than line of battle combat. Think of Petersburg where the armies lay entrenched for months. No way to know when artillery fire was going to land in your part of the line and no way to take action to avoid being killed. At least when you marched across the field in line of battle, you knew when/where the enemy was.

ETA: @Yankeedave Ive never heard of Union soldiers being handed medication before? Do you know where you read that? And what it was?

 

[Yankeedave]

I agree with others who posted above, that the "shock by shell" diagnosis most likely referenced the results of physical trauma, but its amazing there wasn't really any true recognition of the psychological impact. Once entrenching became prevalent it had to have been much more terrifying than line of battle combat. Think of Petersburg where the armies lay entrenched for months. No way to know when artillery fire was going to land in your part of the line and no way to take action to avoid being killed. At least when you marched across the field in line of battle, you knew when/where the enemy was.

ETA: @Yankeedave Ive never heard of Union soldiers being handed medication before? Do you know where you read that? And what it was?

I have read of drug problems within the army of the potomac. I mentioned it in another thread and others ran with the data. I was astonished at the usage and at the government's seemingly thorough support. But i digress.

 

[Yankeedave]

It's not the shell that gets you its all that miss.

 

[JohnW.]

T

There some murky depths to how cw vets or any vets handled and or were handled post war. Twenty one vets a day kill themselves so this is still a problem.
i have one question. Union vets were handed drugs as they left. Did the ones taken during the war numb them to the horrible experiance going in and in some measure fix themselves beforehand?

Alot of soldiers became addicted to morphine as a result of being wounded. Drug addiction became a huge bi-product of the conflict. North more than South.