2000, gift of the South Carolina State Hospital.

Description: Volume considering the nature of shell-shock, psychiatric treatments, and attitudes towards mental illness.

One of the most important books ever written on the psychological toll of war, this groundbreaking study explores the causes and effects of shell shock on soldiers during World War I. Drawing on first-hand accounts and extensive research, Smith and Pear offer a compelling analysis of a little-understood phenomenon that still resonates today. This work has been selected by scholars as being culturally important, and is part of the knowledge base of civilization as we know it. This work is in the "public domain in the United States of America, and possibly other nations. Within the United States, you may freely copy and distribute this work, as no entity (individual or corporate) has a copyright on the body of the work. Scholars believe, and we concur, that this work is important enough to be preserved, reproduced, and made generally available to the public. We appreciate your support of the preservation process, and thank you for being an important part of keeping this knowledge alive and relevant.

Excerpt from Shell Shock: And Its Lessons HE demand for a new edition affords us the opportunity I of once more explaining the chief aim of the book, which some of its critics have not adequately understood. Its purpose is to call attention to certain factors in diagnosis and treatment which most physicians have unduly neglected in dealing with incipient mental disturbance. In preparing the book we were not attempting to write a complete manual upon the therapy of mental disease, but were merely pleading for the recognition of the vitally important part played by emotional disturbances in the causation of shell shock, and the necessity of dealing with those radical causal factors as the basis of really rational and effective treatment. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.

This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can usually download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1918 edition. Excerpt: ...for the community. If the former, it may be pointed out that every reasonable person will agree that the man who does not tell the whole truth to his doctor or his lawyer is a fool. Furthermore, even under present conditions, if it be considered advisable in the interests of the patient's bodily health, the doctor does not hesitate to ask, and the patient to answer, questions about the most intimate matters, some of them literally and not merely metaphorically nauseous. We may therefore dismiss the aesthetic objection as unworthy of the consideration either of a conscientious doctor, or of a reasonable patient. We may turn now to what we have designated.the social aspect of the objection. It should need little explanation. There has arisen a convention, subscribed to consciously or unconsciously by many, that the doctor shall ask and the patient answer quite freely questions relating to the patient's bodily well-being, but that any unusual mental occurrences must be considered the patient's private affair into which it is not the business of the doctor to pry. It would be rash to deny that up to a certain point this convention is susceptible of defence. But, carried too far, it is productive of disastrous results. Moreover, it is impossible for a doctor to treat many varieties even of physical disease without becoming to a great extent the confidant not only of the patient but often of his family. And there is no doubt that the present unwritten law that the doctor should confine himself to the patient's physical ills is often judiciously disobeyed by very many successful practitioners. Yet it must be recognised that the convention exists, and like all social usages is extremely tenacious. The chief medical objection, which we shall now!...