SHELL-SHOCK

Dominion, Volume 10, Issue 2935, 22 November 1916, Page 4

SHELL-SHOCK

AND THE EFFECT OF MENTAL SUGGESTION. Many men havo returned from tho fighting front in France suffering moro or loss from shell-shock, a derangement of tho nervous system caused by the shattering effect of tho vibratory forco of high explosives. Thero aro those men on service who aro so constituted that they get used to the almost ceaseless shocks of tho big guns and bursting shells, and who have actually been known to sleep in the midst of it all. With their ears blocked up with cotton wool or waste, and dead tired, they havo lived through poriods of intense bomhardment, and havo come out unimpaired. On the other hand others simply cannot stand tho awful din and great air-shocks, and after a time it tells on their nervous systems, and they aro sent to the back lines suffering from shell-shock, from which it takes months to recover. In conversation with a Dominion reporter recently, one of Wellington's leading medical men stated that ho had had an oxperionco -with a young man who had returned from tho .war not so long ago. Tho man had been a sufferer from shell-shock, but was progressing satisfactorily towards recovery, _ when ho went to see the moving picture, "The Battle of tho Somme." So realistically did this scene bring back to him all tho suffering ho had recently undergone under circumstances similar to those set out in the picthro that he had a complete relapse, and was only now beginning to pick up again. . In our informant's opinion, returned wounded soldiers should not beallowed to witness such pictures, as, in their weakened state, the experience could only bo harmful in tho effect produced. It was a case of the suggestion conveyed to tho mentality by the picturo being too strong for their probably impaired faculties to resist, and the inevitable result was a set-back. The patient told him that his chum had heen affected almost as much as he, so the effect was not an accidental one.