Downton Abbey History

There’s more on shell-shock here, here and here. This source here details the experience and treatment regime of British wartime psychiatrist W.H. Rivers who treated soldiers with shell shock from 1915-1917. A very, very good introductory article is given here by Prof Joanna Bourke. The section on medical symptoms is very interesting when exploring Lang’s character. Here are some interesting facts:

• Four fifths of shell shock cases could not return to military service
• By the end of WWI, there were over 80,000 cases of shell shock
• As early as 1917, it was recognised that war neuroses accounted for one-seventh of all personnel discharged for disabilities from the British Army. Once wounds were excluded, emotional disorders were responsible for one-third of all discharges.
• Shell shock was originally thought to be the result of physical trauma to the nerves.
• It was first coined in 1917 by a medical officer called Charles Myers. It seems to have been coined around August of that year [?] I think. We know this episode takes place around February 1917 due to Branson’s comment about the appointment of Kerensky and the provisional government (unless he’s talking about Kerensky’s reappointment in October, but the way he said it made it sound like it was !BIG NEWS!, so I suspect it’s February)
• I therefore suspect that Fellowes actually made a mistake regarding this, as the term itself wasn’t coined until months later. Even if this month was later, the sluggish recognition by the authorities makes me wonder if it was in common usage/knowledge at the time (again, please correct me if you know differently)

(Source: shewolves, via clairiere)

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See Post tags #andrew lang #downton abbey #robert crawley #shell shock #world war one