Shell-shock and Its Lessons

Abstract

THE conditions of modern warfare, with its trench life, its sudden gas and bomb attacks, the extraordinary intensity of newly discovered explosives, their variety, and also, their long-continued effects when directed against human beings in a life-and-death struggle, have created among our men at the front such an amount of nervous and mental tension that the war has disclosed manifestations never previously anticipated, and the appellation to some of these states of the term “psycho-neuroses” is amply justified. These conditions are, however, rare in the trenches, although far from uncommon behind the lines, in the field hospitals, at the base, and especially at home. They occur also in labour battalions, and even among those who have never crossed the Channel. Nevertheless, we owe an inexpressible debt to all our menfolk in the line; they have suffered long and endured many things with the dogged determination to win victory for liberty, social justice, and human brotherhood. The price we pay for deathless courage and for records of supreme self-sacrifice on the part of officers and men, who lay down their lives to guard our homes and to protect our and their own flesh and blood, implies an intense stress and strain, resulting in many instances in a complete breakdown of mind and body; yet the proportion of mental cases is not so large as might have been expected, although their number in the aggregate with so great an army is naturally high.

Shell-shock and Its Lessons.

By Prof. G. Elliot Smith T. H. Pear. Pp. xi + 135. (Manchester: At the University Press; London: Longmans, Green, and Co., 1917.) Price 2s. 6d. net.