![]() Vischer, I already knew, was no stranger to the physical and emotional traumas of modern war. DeBakey Fellowship and with a fast approaching deadline to finish a book-length study of civilian internment in the years 1914–1920, on a two-week research trip from Sheffield, England, to Bethesda, Maryland. Eight months later I found myself, as a fortunate recipient of a Michael E. It was a chance conversation I had at a conference in the UK in September 2018, that first drew my attention to the potential link between ‘barbed-wire disease’ and the history of medicine during the First World War more generally. The name of the book was Die Stacheldrahtkrankheit, and an English translation- titled Barbed-Wire Disease-soon followed in 1919. In 1918 Vischer published a remarkable account in German of the psychological harm done to young men through the modern phenomenon of wartime captivity in POW and internment camps. One observer of the impact of the First World War on the human condition who chose not to follow Freud was the Swiss physician Adolf Lukas Vischer (1884–1974). ![]() Kinnier Wilson, 1919 Courtesy The British Library Illustration by English artist Eleanor Fortescue Brickdale in Visher’s Barbed Wire Disease: A Psychological Study of the Prisoner of War … Translated from the German by S. The Berlin sexologist Magnus Hirschfeld (1868–1935), a leading advocate of Freud’s theories, argued in his two-volume study The Sexual History of the World War (1929–30) that an unacknowledged sadomasochism lay at the heart of modern society’s acceptance of state-sponsored violence and war, and predicted worse things to come in the realm of international politics. Many turned to the theories of the Viennese founder of psychoanalysis, Sigmund Freud (1856–1939)-especially after the latter introduced the concept of the ‘death instinct’ or Thanatos as the antipode to the ‘sex instinct’ or Eros in his influential essays Beyond the Pleasure Principle (1920) and Civilization and its Discontents (1930). What became known as ‘shell shock’ had a major impact on the way medical experts viewed the consequences of modern warfare for the future of their profession-and for the future of humanity in general. While modern weapons had helped create this problem, generals hoped that they would also assist the Army in fighting their way out of it.By Matthew Stibbe ~ 132nd Infantry in front-line trench, Forges, October 3, 1918Įven before the guns fell silent in Northern France and Belgium on November 11, 1918, the prevalence of mental disturbance among young men who experienced artillery bombardment and combat in the trenches of the western front was grabbing the attention of the international scientific community. This system was strengthened with fortifications, underground shelters and thick belts of barbed wire.įor commanders, the greatest tactical problem was to get troops safely across the fire-swept divide between the trenches to penetrate enemy defences. Communication trenches linked them all together. The front-line trenches were backed-up by second and third lines: 'support' and 'reserve' trenches. These early trenches were built quickly and tended to be simple affairs that offered little protection from the elements. Both sides dug in and a line of trenches soon ran from the Channel to the Swiss frontier. The First Battle of Ypres (20 October - 22 November 1914) marked the end of open and mobile warfare on the Western Front. The destructive power of modern artillery and machine guns forced soldiers to seek cover on the battlefield and dig in for protection. ![]() Weapons played a large part in creating the difficult and unusual circumstances of trench warfare which the British Army encountered during the First World War (1914-18). ![]()
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