The Russell Cawthorn Collection
The Great War 1914-1918, and Associated Conflicts Medical Shell Shock and Other Psychiatric Conditions
War Neuroses and Shell Shock
ISBN
Purchase Price
£75.00 (second hand)
Date Purchased
December 20, 2021
Publisher
Henry Frowde/Hodder & Stoughton (1919, London)
Notes
This book has a Preface by The Rt. Hon. Christopher Addison, M.D., M.P., Minister of Reconstruction. The book is an important one for this sub-category on shell-shock. Its author, a very prominent clinician of the time, held, as did Maudsley - with whom he set up the Maudsley Hospital, that mental illness was inherited due to degenerate family lives that worsened until dying out. He theorised that mental disease was due to pathology of the sexual reproductive system, as evidenced for example of atrophied testes, causing breakdown of cerebral neurons in certain parts of the brain. He claimed in a lecture after the war that shell-shock was rare in volunteers as opposed to regularly conscripted men, and that it was not a new disorder but merely a variation occurring in those already disposed. Nevertheless, he did not underestimate the impact of the environment - a crucial factor in the treatment of shell-shock. Accordingly, this book is important because it represents at least part of the work which was carried out on shell-shock, particularly during the war. Modern medicine may well have moved on considerably, but the book is an important and relevant stepping-stone in the journey to modern medical appreciation and understanding of the condition.
Purchase Price
£75.00 (second hand)
Date Purchased
December 20, 2021
Publisher
Henry Frowde/Hodder & Stoughton (1919, London)
Notes
This book has a Preface by The Rt. Hon. Christopher Addison, M.D., M.P., Minister of Reconstruction. The book is an important one for this sub-category on shell-shock. Its author, a very prominent clinician of the time, held, as did Maudsley - with whom he set up the Maudsley Hospital, that mental illness was inherited due to degenerate family lives that worsened until dying out. He theorised that mental disease was due to pathology of the sexual reproductive system, as evidenced for example of atrophied testes, causing breakdown of cerebral neurons in certain parts of the brain. He claimed in a lecture after the war that shell-shock was rare in volunteers as opposed to regularly conscripted men, and that it was not a new disorder but merely a variation occurring in those already disposed. Nevertheless, he did not underestimate the impact of the environment - a crucial factor in the treatment of shell-shock. Accordingly, this book is important because it represents at least part of the work which was carried out on shell-shock, particularly during the war. Modern medicine may well have moved on considerably, but the book is an important and relevant stepping-stone in the journey to modern medical appreciation and understanding of the condition.