I mean war always has been a part of our life since the first civilizations was established. I’m sure “shellshock” wasn’t only caused by artilery shots.
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WWI trauma was different because of massive explosions happening often nearby. Shell-shock is kind of a mix between Trauma/PTSD and brain damage from the pressure waves.
You have no idea what those people lived, WW1 was brutal and out of scale in front of any other war, even in front of ww2.
I’d suggest, without a depth of knowledge on the subject. That psychoanalysis was a relatively new science at the time of WW1. So even though PTSD was a thing, there really were no doctors who could diagnose it until that time. So suddenly, you have a new science with a sudden influx of patients with identical symptoms.
Remember, Europe was “relatively” peaceful after Napoleon was defeated. Psychoanalysis was born in that period of peace. So there were few psychiatrists and few soldiers with PTSD to diagnose.
I think the scale of survivors, as in people who in previous wars suffered head wounds and died as a result were instead returned home wounded in such massive numbers it became a public health concern. Shells, and shell caps are both inventions of WW1. The tactic of battering the hell out of somewhere with artillery was impossible at such scale in the preindustrial world and so was defending against it. We got good at keeping bodies alive in trenches faster than we got good at healing, or caring to heal, those bodies after.
Perhaps the oldest chronic mental health problem caused by combat trauma we know of, from the account of the battle of Marathon by Herodotus, written in 440 bc (*History,* Book VI, transi. George Rawlinson):
*A strange prodigy likewise happened at this fight. Epizelus, the son of Cuphagoras, an Athenian, was in the thick of the fray and behaving himself as a brave man should, when suddenly he was stricken with blindness, without blow of sword or dart; and this blindness continued thenceforth during the whole of his afterlife. The following is the account which he himself, as I have heard, gave of the matter: he said that a gigantic warrior, with a huge beard, which shaded all his shield, stood over against him; but the ghostly semblance passed him by, and slew the man at his side. Such, as I understand, was the tale which Epizelus told.*
Back then they hadn’t given a name to PTSD, but they had the concept.
Later, in the Napoleonic Wars they referred to *“vent du boulet”* syndrome – it described those who had felt the wind of a bullet / cannonball pass by so close that traumatised soldiers might fall into a stupor despite not being physically harmed.
It wasn’t.
Before then it was “battle neurosis” or “war neurosis” or even just nerves. Or, horribly, “cowardice”. Probably more than a few soldiers got shot for “cowardice” when the actual problem was PTSD.
The *name* “shellshock” comes from WW1. There may have been more cases because of the number of people involved, but it was just a new name for something that already existed – we just didn’t start calling it PTSD until relatively recently.
Dan Carlin in his “Blueprint for Armageddon” audio series really explains it well. War is hell, and while soldiers of all eras have been scared by it in various ways, the stalemate of WWI trench warfare was an amplification of the worst of the past the longer it went on. The sustained fighting with little actual movement between lines, and the constant of gunfire and shelling had a particularly nasty effect on soldiers mental states. Shellshock refers specifically to the conditions on the state of mind (and the physical neurological impact) created by constant artillery shelling for extended periods of time.
Before Shellshock was diagnosed, it was called cowardice. And cowards were easily killed in an up close battle, man to man.
We now realise that was a horrific way to think of it, and recognise PTSD as a real and debilitating mental illness.
It’s not new, going back to as long as humans have had warfare probably, but WWI was on a scale and intensity far above and beyond anything that had come before.
Basically, the sample size was vastly increased, allowing scientific study of the victims and a more formal diagnosing criteria to be made.
But even then, what we would now call PTSD, was still debated as to if it even actually existed. Men were executed for “cowardess” during the war and were often called the same after the war.
“The Body Keeps The Score” is an excellent read that talks about the exact origins within the first chapter. Great sauce material!
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