Shell shock, neurasthenia and war neurosis
Two Official British figures claim that 80,000 cases of shell shock passed through the various medical facilities during WW1 but many cases were covered up by sending psychiatric cases to ordinary hospitals and the true figure could be approximately 200,000 cases. German records recorded a figure of 613,047 cases of nervous disorders between 1913-1918.
'Neurasthenia' was a term used by an American neurologist, George Beard, M.D. in 1869. He described patients as neurasthenic when they were depressed and inert. 'War neurosis' was described as nervous exhaustion through overwork and the Weir Mitchell Cure was applied - isolation, rest and a diet rich in milk-based foods.
The term 'shell shock' was first used in the public domain by Charles Samuel Meyers, a Cambridge psychologist, in an article he wrote about the cases he had been treating. He felt uncomfortable about using the term because it did not describe the mental conditions that these men were suffering.
Shell shock was literally the shock felt by a soldier near to an exploding shell and the feelings of having one's senses assaulted by the detonation flash, heat, displacement of the air and the ground tremors as the shell formed a crater in the earth.
By the mid-nineteenth century in America, fatigue, viewed as a nervous disorder brought about by the brain work or the professional classes, rather than the physical work of the working classes, received sympathetic treatment from the American and European medical profession.
Fatigue, bordering on exhaustion, was seen as a central focus of a cluster of nervous conditions. These conditions were named by the neurologist George Beard in 1869 as neurasthenia.
Neurologists worked with Civil War soldiers who suffered from battle fatigue and other nervous conditions brought on by the war. These physicians eagerly accepted the term as one that differentiated insanity from neurosis.
Even earlier at the beginning of the nineteenth century, an English physician, Thomas Trotter, in A View of the Nervous Temperament (1807), had identified the nervous disorders of mental workers as the chief medical problem of the new century, surpassing fever, which he believed had been more common in the previous century.
4.0 out of 5 stars Trouble In Our Worker's Paradise!, June 28, 2000
By Barron Laycock "Labradorman" (Temple, New Hampshire United States) - See all my reviews
(TOP 50 REVIEWER) (REAL NAME) This review is from: The Overworked American: The Unexpected Decline Of Leisure (Paperback)
America is the fabled land of plenty, and according to Juliet Schor, most of us seem to be lining up for more than our share of work hours. In our unabated obsession to get more than our fair share of the virtual cornucopia of goods and services out there in the marketplace, we seem to have become collectively addicted to working more and more hours in a devil's bargain with our employers. This book is a wonderful overview of this long-term trend toward overwork, where the average American now works the equivalent of an extra month a year.
Since it is cheaper to pay someone overtime than it is to hire new workers and pay the associated benefits, corporations gladly ante up to pay for our increasing presence at work. Yet this mysterious and unexpected contemporary American addiction to being on the job has its associated costs (as well as causes).
Harvard professor Juliet Schor spins a convincing and disturbing tale regarding the increasing numbers of hours we spend each week at work rather than leisure. This is a historical surprise, since most baby boomers emerged from the colleges and universities convinced we would have more leisure time and better ways to pursue our many avocational interests than any generation in the past. In this entertaining, topical, and quite readable book, the author surveys a plethora of reasons for the surprising trend toward overwork.
The principal dynamic she pinpoints in influencing this trend is an economy that literally demands extra effort and time from its employees, an economy which until quite recently had a chronic shortage of available jobs and "surplus" labor pool of potential workers.
Under such circumstances, anyone lacking the requisite willingness to work extra hours was indeed dispensable. Thus one becomes a careerist in an effort to survive.
She also details how our culturally conditioned goal-oriented attitude toward time as a resource to be used effectively and efficiently rather than as a precious resource to be used to increase the quality of our own lives plays into the situation.
For Schor, we are on a treadmill, if not to oblivion, then to an impoverished cultural life where we are what we do occupationally rather than what we do and what we become in our leisure hours pursuing our avocations and our personal lives with family and friends.
This is an important and path breaking book, one that we should find especially relevant given the fact that many of the jobs we are so seemingly addicted to will soon fade away in the new markets and new economies of the so-called "Third Wave".
Anyone who has experienced "downsizing" at the hands of a large and impersonal corporation can tell you how quickly all those sacrifices and long hours are disregarded and forgotten by your employer. The emotional and economic impacts of such events can be devastating to the individual and his or her family. As a friend said to me recently, anyone who is what they do really isn't very much at all. Read and heed.
Paula Radcliffe of Britain, appropriately front and center even at the start, won the women's New York City Marathon nine months after giving birth. She finished in 2 hours 23 minutes 9 seconds, far slower than her world record of 2:15.25.
Running on Empty
In the 1990s, tired and overworked Americans were losing confidence about moving toward a better life in spite of their intense and passionate dedication to the work ethic. They were "running on empty" because they felt overworked and tired.
In 1875, the English physician, Dr. George Johnson, wrote an article in The Lancet which he called, "Lectures on Some Nervous Disorders that Result from Overwork and Anxiety." Since 1853 Dr. Johnson had been studying cases of fatigue he thought might fall into the category of fatigue caused by "overwork and anxiety."
In his Lancet article he describes the symptoms of a twenty-three-year overworked legal clerk:
"For several weeks he had suffered from headache, confusion of thought, and inability to work. His appetite was bad, and he complained of uneasiness after taking food. He slept badly, and he was much distressed by dreams. The cause of the symptoms in this case was overwork of brain."
Dr. Johnson concludes:
"We may commonly notice, that an overworked man, whether his work be mechanical or mental, becomes an over anxious, nervous man. The overtaxing of the strength is attended by a sense of fatigue and exhaustion, loss of appetite for food, and often by inability to sleep soundly; with this there comes an anxious dread of breaking down, and the combination of fatigue, anxiety, and unrefreshing sleep is a common cause of mental and bodily collapse."
Human history moves through cycles of high to low energy periods.
Europe in the Renaissance and the French Revolution were periods of high energy.
Michelangelo and Beethoven gave artistic expression to the enthusiasm of these two energy peaks in human history.
The Race Toward the Future Chapter II
In my last post I asked the following question:
Why were the 1990s called an "age of disappointment" and a "time of diminished expectations."
I also asked for readers comments.
None, so far.
As Judge Judy would say, "Put on your thinking
caps!
Overview
Henry Adams' 1904 Prediction
Henry Adams predicted in 1904 that, "The new American --the child of incalculable coal power, electric power, and radiating energy, as well as of new forces yet undetermined--must be a sort of God compared with any former creature of nature."
His 1904 prediction continues:
"Every American who lives into the year 2000 will think in complexities unimaginable to an earlier mind and deal with a range of problems no other previous society could even conceive. "
Adams probably was speaking with tongue in cheek when he made those predictions. He was challenging the growing belief that scientific discoveries and new technologies based on these discoveries would open the door to an American Utopia.
Students of American sociology have called the 1990s an "Age of Disappointment" and a "time of diminished expectations."
Why?
I would welcome your thoughts on this question.
Write your comments in the box after the post or to jordanp.richman@gmail.com
Thanks!
