Shell Shock and Its Lessons

by Grafton Elliot Smith, Tom Pear, Gerald Luttmann (Foreword)

Shellshock and Its Lessons demonstrates how the facets of war significantly impacted the development of the field of mental health beginning in World War I. This study, and book, made psychiatry a valued professionally viewed field within medicine itself. Smith and Pear present a detailed understanding of the elements of the trauma that developed from war battle(s). Both speak with regard to of the existing place of much needed mental institutions as well as their recommendations for the continued study of Shellshock and the mental illness that followed. Shellshock and Its Lessons is an important book in the study of mental history. This book characterizes many of the various facets, and deep-rooted changes, combined with the necessary development(s) that occurred in the psychiatric field of practice during the early 20th century.

Throughout the years, up to today, Shellshock is now known to many as (PTSD) aka Post Traumatic Stress Syndrome. No longer is PTSD limited to a battlefield situation, but to any trauma inflicted, either temporary or permanently, that causes many people to suffer from the debilitating effects of said trauma. A MUST READ for anybody studying in the field of Psychiatry, or other medical practice. Filled with case studies and the effects that plays on one's mind.

145 pages, Kindle Edition

First published January 1, 1917

About the author

Sir Grafton Elliot Smith FRS FRSE FRCP was an Australian-British anatomist, Egyptologist and a proponent of the hyperdiffusionist view of prehistory. He believed in the idea that cultural innovations occur only once and that they spread geographically. Based on this, he traced the origins of many cultural and traditional practices across the world, including the New World, to ideas that he believed came from Egypt and in some instances from Asia. An expert on brain anatomy, he was one of the first to study Egyptian mummies using radiological techniques. He took an interest in extinct humanoids and was embroiled in controversy over the authenticity of the Piltdown Man.