The Puzzle of Wounds: Shock and the Body at War
The Puzzle of Wounds: Shock and the Body at War
Chapter 2 launches our study of the body at war—the injured soldier’s body during and after World War I, and specifically the body that, once injured, appeared to be at war with itself. The chapter focuses on the fierce debates around “wound shock” that took place in the period 1916–1919 and that brought together many of the protagonists of this book who have since receded into historical oblivion. It also locates shock in a group of daunting whole-body conditions: “soldier’s heart,” shell shock, sepsis, shallow breathing, and exhaustion. These conditions provided sites for pursuing, adapting, and applying research, particularly on hormones and the interaction between different systems within the body, and consequently they supplied a framework for understanding how each organism behaves—and collapses—as a unit.
Keywords: battlefield, British Expeditionary Force (WWI), William M. Bayliss, Walter B. Cannon, Alexis Carrel, E. M. Cowell, Henry Dale, disintegration, George Washington Crile, Erwin Morris, F. W. Mott, Charles S. Myers, shell shock, soldier's heart, surgery, wound shock, World War I
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