‘An atmosphere of cure’: Frederick Mott, shell shock and the Maudsley

Jones, Edgar

doi:10.1177/0957154x14544262

Cited by 23 publications

(4 citation statements)

References 29 publications

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“…He dedicated his time during World War I to the investigation and treatment of shell-shock and was widely considered a leading figure in the field. 27 In 1918, he declared that 'in the majority of cases [of shell-shock] there is no evidence of commotional shock or concussion'. 28 The 1922 War Office enquiry into shell-shock found that soldiers with 'concussion shock' made up only 5-10% of all shell-shock cases.…”

Section: Confusing Termsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Hysteria, head injuries and heredity: ‘shell-shocked’ soldiers of the Royal Edinburgh Asylum, Edinburgh (1914–24)

2022

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This project illustrates as-yet-uncharted psychiatric patients from the Royal Edinburgh Asylum (REA) around the time of World War I, predominantly ‘shell-shocked’ soldiers. Primary patient notes help to elucidate definitions, symptoms and perceptions of ‘shell-shock’, in addition to its links with other psychiatric conditions. This includes general paralysis of the insane (GPI), alcohol excess, mania and melancholia. Whereas the majority of these patients were suffering from shell-shock, it is not once explicitly listed as a diagnosis; it was a term whose use was discouraged by the War Office and key medical experts from 1916 onwards. As such, this paper demonstrates effects that canonical views held by the War Office and military psychiatrists on shell-shock aetiology had on language used in psychiatric patient notes. The results corroborate wartime views that mental distress due to a physical head injury was preferable to shell-shock without obvious cause; that neurasthenia was a more desirable diagnostic label than hysteria; and that mental illness was predominantly due to an inherited flaw in someone's character. Language used by psychiatrists to describe their patients was influenced by contemporary perspectives on gender, class and mental illness. More broadly, this paper adds to discussions about definitions and symptomatology of shell-shock that are being uncovered in historical patient notes from this period.

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Section: Confusing Termsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Hysteria, head injuries and heredity: ‘shell-shocked’ soldiers of the Royal Edinburgh Asylum, Edinburgh (1914–24)

2022

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“…Frederick Mott, author of the term 'atmosphere of cure', introduced carpentry classes, choral singing, social events and turned the Maudsley Hospital grounds into a market garden with a poultry house to supplement the War Offi ce diet. 23 Psychological therapy was also practised at Seale Hayne under Hurst. Dr RG Gordon, a physician who subsequently practised as a neurologist took a particular interest in psychotherapy noting, 'there are certain of these cases which prove abnormally resistant to the ordinary methods of persuasion and suggestion, and in these a straightening out of the mental attitude may be of great assistance'.…”

Section: The Treatment Techniques Of Hurst -Rehabilitationmentioning

confidence: 99%

Hurst Rehabilitated: The Treatment of Functional Motor Disorders by Arthur Hurst during the First World War

Jones

Stone

2020

Journal of the Royal College of Physicians of Edinburgh

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Arthur Hurst was a British First World War physician, best known for his films of shell shock, ‘War Neuroses'. He has often been portrayed an innovative pioneer of somewhat mysterious ‘suggestion’ techniques for functional motor disorders but also as an ambitious clinician who exaggerated the effectiveness of his treatments and failed to address psychological factors. His use of suggestion, persuasion and re-education together with occupational therapy, for chronic or severe cases of shell shock stirred controversy at the time because of the dramatic nature of some of his treatment responses and lack of outcome data. In part, this was a turf war between neurologists and psychiatrists for a dominant therapeutic model. A re-evaluation of his publications and new research into soldiers treated at Seale Hayne in Devon show that Hurst pioneered multidisciplinary and empathetic treatments for functional motor disorders with good short-term outcomes, though insufficient data survives to assess longer term outcomes.

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“…Such studies tend to present the relationship of the wounded and disabled men, the ‘poor brave souls’ of charitable campaigns (Cohen 2001 , 101–148), with wartime medicine as either an effeminizing or infantilising one (Jones 2014 , 417). The shell shock sufferers of Showalter’s analysis ‘were silenced and immobilized [by war] and forced, like women, to express their conflicts through the body.’ (Showalter 1987 , 171).…”

Section: War Medicine and Gendermentioning

confidence: 99%

Medicos, poultice wallahs and comrades in service: masculinity and military medicine in Britain during the First World War

Meyer

2019

Critical Military Studies

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The subject of British military medicine during the First World War has long been a fruitful one for historians of gender. From the bodily inspection of recruits and conscripts through the expanding roles of women as medical care providers to the physical and emotional aftermath of conflict experienced by men suffering from warrelated wounds and illness, the medical history of the war has shed important light on how the war shaped British masculinities and femininities as cultural, subjective and embodied identities. Much of this literature has, however, focused on the gendered identities of female nurses and sick and wounded servicemen. Increasingly, however, more complex understandings of the ways in which medical caregiving in wartime shaped the gender identities of male caregivers are starting to emerge. This article explores some of these emerging understandings of the masculinity of male medical caregivers, and their relationship to the wider literature around the complex and sometimes contradictory relationship between warfare and medicine. It examines the ways in which the masculine identity of male medical caregivers from the ranks of the Royal Army Medical Corps, namely stretcher bearers and medical orderlies, was perceived and represented both by the men themselves and those they cared for. In doing so it argues that total war played a crucial role in shaping social and cultural perceptions of caregiving as a gendered practice. It also identifies particular tensions between continuity and change in social understandings of medical care as a gendered practice which would continue to shape twentieth-century British society in the war's aftermath.

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‘An atmosphere of cure’: Frederick Mott, shell shock and the Maudsley

Cited by 23 publications

References 29 publications

Hysteria, head injuries and heredity: ‘shell-shocked’ soldiers of the Royal Edinburgh Asylum, Edinburgh (1914–24)

Hysteria, head injuries and heredity: ‘shell-shocked’ soldiers of the Royal Edinburgh Asylum, Edinburgh (1914–24)

Hurst Rehabilitated: The Treatment of Functional Motor Disorders by Arthur Hurst during the First World War

Medicos, poultice wallahs and comrades in service: masculinity and military medicine in Britain during the First World War

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