Usual post-traumatic stress
- London, 1915. The English psychologist Charles Myers (1873-1946) first used the term “shell shock” in the medical journal The Lancet to describe what was happening to many soldiers fighting on the fronts of World War I.
Without any physical injury, with no apparent cause, they presented symptoms such as amnesia, vibrations, nightmares, loss of vision and ability to speak… The psychologist attributed the new evil to the immense ammunition and heavy artillery that was first used in that conflict and that is why he named it. Others would call it war neurosis, and today it's called posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD).
Without a clear and verifiable explanation, for many military chiefs it was a cowardice, and dozens of soldiers were sentenced to death. Some efforts were also made to alleviate these symptoms more effectively – and keep the number of soldiers on the front line – giving patients a break for several days, but in 1917 the British Army completely banned the diagnosis and was also censored in non-military medical documents. That disease was a taboo even for its enemies. It is rumored that Adolf Hitler, a soldier during World War I, was temporarily blind, but then carefully erased all the evidence.
However, the TOEN caused by the war was not new. Herodotus (c. 484-425) Battle of Marathon (c. 490) said in a passage: “In that battle a strange miracle happened: in the midst of battle, the Athenian Epicelo, the son of Kufagoras, a noble soldier, suddenly ceded, without receiving close blows or distant arrows, and since then was blinded for life.”
And in 2015, researchers Jamie Hacker Hughes and Walid Abdul-Hamid discovered older TOEN remains, with the analysis of Assyrian texts from 3,300 years ago. These texts describe the nervous attacks of fighting soldiers, the vibrations of the extremities and, above all, the nightmares. For them the world of dreams was closely linked to the world of the dead. The relationship they maintained with the dead while they slept was also physical. For example, many illnesses were thought to be infected by the dead in dreams. At night, this direct relationship with his dead and enemies exerted a powerful influence on his soldiers. The cyclical military system of the Assyrians would at least help them to alleviate the disease; after one year of military exercise, they worked one more year on public works.
Thus, it can be concluded that post-traumatic stress disorder caused by war is as old as war itself. And that in ancient times it was the disease with greater sensitivity and understanding than in the early twentieth century.
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