Shell-shock and other neuropsychiatric problems

by Elmer Ernest Southard

Così od’ is che solava la lancia

d’Achille e del suo padre esser cagione

prima di trista e poi di buona mancia.

Thus I have heard that the lance of Achilles,

and of his father, used to be occasion

first of sad and then of healing gift.

Inferno, Canto XXXI, 4-6.

[8] Material is here drawn passim from the compiler’s Shattuck Lecture on Shell-shock and After, read before the Massachusetts Medical Society, Boston, June 18, 1918.

Terminology

1. Shell-shock, a lay term, usually refers to the medical entity or disease-group: functional neurosis, or more briefly, neurosis.