Shell Shock & World War I

Running head: SHELL SHOCK & WORLD WAR I
Shell Shock & World War I
Name of the Student:
Name of the University:
Author Note:

1SHELL SHOCK & WORLD WAR I
The study will be based on World War I and an account will be developed so that it can
help in the diagnosis, treatment and recognition of shell shock. The study will focus on several
factors of war like the advanced medicine, scale of the war, and the new stance on the personal
accounts from the survivors of the war and to support the study itself.
Shell shock can be defined as condition in which the soldiers experience a trauma and it
forces the person to move into a state of shock that are within the proximity of the exploding
artillery (Myers 2012). While PTSD is Post Traumatic Stress Disorder and it describes a mental
condition that are triggered by the terrifying events. The symptoms of the PTSD includes the
uncontrollable thoughts of the events, severe anxiety, nightmares, and flashbacks (The
Conversation 2018).
In historical accounts PTSD has already been recorded in the early literary works like the
Epic of Gigamesh. It is the earliest existing literature that dates back to 2100 B.C. In this work, it
has been seen that the main character Gigamesh witnessed the death of his close friend Enkidu.
The death of Gigamesh’s close friend traumatized endiku and due to this, Gigamesh experienced
nightmares, intrusive and recurrent collections related to the event (Rausch et al 2014). Then in
the 440 B.C an account of the battle of Marathon presented a picture of how Epizelus (Athenian)
suddenly went blind in the middle of a battle after seeing one of his comrades getting killed in
the battle. The blindness of Epizelus was not due to any physical wound but it was rather due to
fright which persisted for several years (Browning 2018). Later in the year 1861 to 1865, US was
experiencing a civil war and a US doctor named Jacob Mendez Da Costa carried out studies on
the soldiers (veterans) of the civil war. He found that the veterans other than the wound also
suffered from the several other issues that are not related to wounds, such as cardiovascular
symptoms, constricted breathing and palpitations. Dr Da Costa saw that the symptoms arose due

2SHELL SHOCK & WORLD WAR I
to the overstimulation of the heart’s nervous system and this condition later came to be known as
“Da Costa Syndrome” or “Soldier’s heart” (Jones 2013). In the year 1761, Joseph Leopold wrote
on “nostalgia” which used to occur within the soldiers. The experiences shared by the soldiers
signified that they the troops used to suffer from anxiety, sleep problems, sad feeling, reports of
missing from home and military trauma. The Franco-Prussian war (1970-1871) marked the
beginning of the medical attempts so that the problems of the war veterans that are exposed to
combat can be addressed (Howard 2013). In the World War I shell shock was one of the major
side effects and many soldiers suffered from it. Shell shock or war neurosis was caused by the
constant fighting and the heavy explosions during the war situations. The soldiers that were
affected by shell shock were unable to sleep and similarly they used to panic when they hear
shouting, loud noises and gunshots (Southard 1919). It has also been seen that shell shocks used
to affect the ability of the soldiers to talk and walk. The issues of shell shock are generally
related to the world war (Mott 1919).
There were instances like euphoria or war fatigue which highlighted the destructive
violence that is unleashed by the World War I (serious-science.org. 2018). The frenetic shouts by
the people when the soldiers were going to the war were spine chilling. When the First World
War broke out different sections of the people moved into a war craze of euphoria. Researches
have shown that the war euphoria was an inclusive phenomenon and it included all the sections
of the society (Ivanova, 2014). This mood was soon raptured by the horrifying pictures of the
world war. The war euphoria turned into a war fatigue when the war started to use mechanised
forces, countless mutilation and wounds and the rising conditions of the mental stress when the
soldiers used to say in the trenches. By the year of 1916, the war fatigue started to grip the
soldiers and led to war fatigue, revolts, mass strikes and hunger riots (Wagner 2017). The

3SHELL SHOCK & WORLD WAR I
railroad disasters during the world war is manifested into a demolition of the physical machinery
of the soldiers and the passengers. The term railway spine was coined by John Eric Erichsen said
that the survivors that have experienced the train accidents used to be suffering from a form of
PTSD called “railway spine”. Passengers that experienced the railroad accidents in the 19th
century were diagnosed with the PTSD. During the 19th century the railways accidents were a
very common phenomenon and the dangers from the railway accidents because the railway cars
used to be made of wooden structures and the passengers received less amount of protection.
Studies have revealed that the passengers faced issues from the injuries of spine and the brain
(Javidi and Yadollahie 2012).
World war I and what it brought along- The great war brought along with it several
things and it had a big impact on the humanity as a whole (bbc.com 2018). Human cost: by the
end of the First World War more than 16 million people which included both the soldiers and the
civilians died in the course of the war. It is important to note that an entire generation of people
just wiped away. When the war ended there were 15 women for every men and they were
between the age group of 18 to 30 (Uwosh.edu 2018). Nature of warfare: The First World War
changed the very nature of the warfare and it brought along with it technologies and essential
elements like tanks, submarines, airplanes. The techniques of mass production came into being
and it revolutionized the industries and the building of the armaments (King 2016). Birth of
modern surgery: the first word war brought with it the modern techniques of surgery and here the
civil and the military hospital became the arenas where the experiments were carried out. It has
seen millions of the soldiers that survived the war but were disfigured, mutilated, maimed. Skin
grafting came into being that were meant to ease the broken faces. When it was figured that
blood can be prevented from clotting then the blood banks were established. Soldiers started to