← Back to the front page

Odd Solutions to Historic Problems

Khalid Elhassan December 9, 2020 32 min

United States - American Civil War — Young recruits during the Vietnam War, circa 1967. History

33. WWI Psychiatrists Reasoned That the More Unpleasant the Treatment, the Better to Treat Shellshock Sufferers

Shell-shocked soldiers were not suspended from ceilings, but they were otherwise tortured with electric shocks to their private parts. Milli Gazette

As devised by Edgar Adrian, electric shock for treating shellshock had three goals: suggestion, reeducation, and discipline. The focus was greater on the “discipline” part, to the point that shellshock treatment often bordered on or crossed the line into torture. As Adrian wrote in emphasizing the benefits of electric shock from both therapeutic and disciplinary perspectives:

“The current can be made extremely painful if it is necessary to supply the disciplinary element which must be invoked if the patient is one of those who prefer not to recover, and it can be made strong enough to break down the unconscious barriers to sensation in the most profound functional anesthesia“.

Written by

Khalid Elhassan

A lifelong history buff, I developed a particular passion for WW2 history as a child, when I spent hours listening to my grandfather, enraptured, as he recounted his wartime experiences in the British East African Campaign and with the British 8th Army in North Africa.

I graduated with a history BA from George Mason University, then went on to get a JD from the University of Virginia School of Law. After lawyering for a decade, I moved to sunny Rio de Janeiro and a less demanding career, opening a tourism agency in Copacabana.

A big chunk of my free time is spent blogging (you can follow me on Quora https://www.quora.com/profile/Khalid-Elhassan ) or freelance writing, mostly about my favorite subject, history.