Trench Fever Research Paper

Death and disease were omnipresent in the trenches. The health and the living conditions in the trenches were one of the biggest issues faced in World War one. Diseases in the trenches killed more soldiers than bombardment or bullets. Scraps of discarded food, empty tins and other waste, the nearby presence of the latrine, the general dirt of living half underground and being not able to wash or change for a considerable length of time or weeks on end created conditions of severe health risk (1914-1918.net, 2014). The unsanitary living conditions not only caused several health problems but this caused vermin and parasites to be very commonly present in the trenches. The rats were known to grow ‘as big as domestic cats’ according to soldiers fighting in the

An outcome of World War I was a new medical disorder classified as Shell Shock. Shell Shock is a medical disorder developed to describe the symptoms that soldiers developed without a probable or obvious lesion as the cause after serving time on the war front. Shell Shock is one of the most prominent injuries of World War I; the symptoms varied among each soldier, treatments were still being developed, and doctors were still trying to understand the severity of the disorder. The symptoms soldiers described are due to the stress they encountered while they served on the front line. Shell Shock is a condition that soldiers have begun to develop after serving in the war.

World War I was known for its very slow-paced battle and the stage of stalemate. After advancing from Germany on France, battle turned into trench warfare. Trench Warfare is a defensive strategy in a field where the army stays in rows of trenches that were placed along the Western Front during the war. The use of trenches during the Great War was a very significant tactic during battle, by making soldiers hidden but exposed just enough to be able to attack the enemy. On a daily basis, life in the trenches was very scary and filled with horror. Death was upon the soldiers even if there was nobody attacking them. There was a continuous shell fire that would randomly take the lives of many. Some men died on their first day in the trenches, and very few were lucky to make it out unharmed. Shell fire was not the only issue in the trenches. There were plenty of diseases and infections spreading around like a wildfire. Many soldiers got infections and diseases that could not be treated such as Trench Foot or Trench Fever. Although trench warfare acts as a great defensive and offensive measure, it became very dangerous because of the many different causes of death including shell fire, diseases, and infections.

William T Sherman, a union General during the American civil war,is quoted as saying “It is only those who have neither fired a shot nor heard the shrieks and groans of the wounded who cry allowed for more blood, more vengeance, more desolation. War is hell”. A Timeless saying, that reflects the toll of war. He describes the trauma that the War inflicted on him. WW1 was certainly no exception in regards to it’s cost. Trench conditions were severely damaging to the psychological well being of alliance and entente soldiers alike. Soldiers could not predict if they would be the next man to die, even while safe in the trenches.Some soldiers decided to walk into enemy fire rather than continue to serve. Many of the Soldiers relied heavily on

The life of a soldier in the trenches during World War I was unimaginable to the people back home in Canada. Soldiers carried out their duty to their country in the most horrifying conditions. The trenches were rivers of mud and blood, food rations were very basic and designed only to keep the soldiers alive, hygiene was non-existent, and military direction was poor as these men fought for their country. Constant shelling and gas attacks made many soldiers feel that death was imminent and a great deal of men suffered from mental breakdowns due to the war.

Australian soldiers who were delegated to battle in the Western Front often were faced with horrendous conditions; consequently, there were many fatalities and injured soldiers. Fighting in the Western Front, soldiers always had death around them. Whether that was bullet wounds and mustard gas, or even diseases caught from staying in the trenches, such as Trench Fever. Symptoms of Trench Fever is similar to malaria symptoms –a couple include: fever, sore joints and an outbreak of skin lesions (commonly on the back).

Also source A never mentioned any common diseases or injuries such as trench foot, shell shock, body lice and gas attacks, as well as the western front soldiers' physical health overall. Source A had never specified what had happened when the allied was attacking the enemy’s trenches with either weaponry or running across no man's land to kill the competing soldiers. This source doesn't give a very wide portrayal of what was everyday life in the trench fighting and trying to take the enemy soldiers down, the source only told of the small things that happened and was mostly based on his emotions he was going

Shell shock is a type of post-traumatic stress disorder that occurred during World War I. Many Army officials tried to cover up shell shock because they wanted to keep those men in the battlefield. Doctors Charles S. Myers and William McDougall looked into shell shock and started doing studies with the soldiers that had shell shock. Shell shock did have a few treatments which consisted of a bromide, massage, electrical faradization, and a milk diet, but many people that shell shock should be treated with military discipline. Throughout the novel Maisie Dobbs, I saw several cases of shell shock. I also have noticed that people that had loved ones in the war also had a small case of shell shock.

This was when soldiers would become mentally ill due to the terror they had witnessed. The soldiers lost their wits or suffered from severe depression. This made life difficult because they mentally could not carry on and would go mad. They were sent to hospital and returned because of no physical illness. By the end of World War One the British Army had dealt with 80,000 cases of shell shock. In source A1 it states that they would hurt themselves on purpose with a self-inflicted wound. This suggests that conditions were very horrible because it led to them hurting themselves to get away from the war. This source is quite reliable because its written by a historian who has done alit of research and it is on a website for students which means that it will not be made up. This is supported by source A5 which says that they would use a lighted cigarette to get their fore thumb blown off. This source is quite reliable because it is by a soldier telling about his experience in the trenches. However, this source may not be very reliable because it was by a soldier who was remembering from 50 years ago. He may have forgotten what happened and its only one person’s perspective. Also, he may be exaggerating and not telling the

Estimates of up to ten percent of officers and four percent of enlisted soldiers suffered from shell shock in WWI (Macleod, 2004). For an officer to receive a diagnosis of shell shock meant recovery in pleasant surroundings similar to a resort. Enlisted soldiers on the other hand were generally kept close to the battlefield and treated as military disappointments. Those close to artillery fire received a diagnose of physical trauma and those not in close contact with artillery fire where labeled as

In Erin Finley’s “Clinical Histories: From Soldier’s Heart to PTSD” she talks about shell shock or now we know it as post traumatic disorder which in the late 1914 British physicians in france discovered from patients. The patients showed odd symptoms like they were unable to see, hear or taste even though they were not injured, which later the physicians figured that it was combat stress nothing else. Shell shock had more to do with emotional shock than physical shock. The ones that suffer shell shock were thought to be malingering, which is exaggerating illness to escape duty. Those that are ill and wounded especially if his condition was caused by the enemy side then he will be considered coward and were shot. In 1918 Germans launched gas

They had to work in trenches for days on end with hardly any breaks. Walking around in the mud they began to lose their shoes which led to losing layers of skin. “I wondered what it might feel like to be wounded - to be killed! All through that night I never had a wink of sleep. My stomach would insist on rising to my throat to choke me each time I thought of some lurid possibility.

The Second World War (WW2) was a global war that involved most of the great powerful nations, which formed two military alliances the Allies and Axis. WW2 is regarded one of the most widespread wars that involved 100 million people and thirty countries and the worst form of human conflict in history. Contrary to the previous wars, WW2 involved the use of nuclear bombs and sophisticated weapons, which exposed soldiers at high risk of developing post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD). During WW2, the U.S army psychiatrists understood that involvement on warfare may have devastating consequences on the well-being of soldiers and they introduced screening programs and intervention strategies to detect and address psychological disorders associated with combat missions . Despite these measures, the U.S army psychiatrists were puzzled with high number of soldiers who suffered from PTSD during and after the ww2. More than one million soldiers were thoroughly screened during the ww2, but 50% of them developed and suffered from PTSD thus raising a health concern among the health professionals. The reason WW2 soldiers did suffer from PTSD was because of witnessing horrible things, combat trauma and events that had happened before the start if the war.

Trench warfare provided great cover and concealment on the battlefield, by providing various passageways of movement for troops. Trenches were designed to be protected behind rows of mines, channelization of barbed wire obstacles, with the sole purpose of slowing advancement and taking a toll on human lives.[footnoteRef:15] With war, humanity sees and experiences things that have never seen before. As in “Voices from the Battle of the Somme”, man is shell-shocked. Man describes multiple feelings, for example, the extreme effect of stress and visual images that an individual have never felt or seen before.[footnoteRef:16] Some stresses of war are the feelings of being dazed and confused, “I don’t know how I got back. I simply don’t know how I got back.”[footnoteRef:17] With the effect of being dazed and confused, there was a total lack of control on the battlefield, “It was every man for himself. We ran like hell.”[footnoteRef:18] The stress of war showed true feeling of how man was able to control emotions. Expressed emotions can affect how one reacts as we see in, “inclined to cry … I was somewhat ashamed of it.”[footnoteRef:19] Additionally, the use of technology during WW1 played a significant role, by changing the entire face of battle. The machine gun and the tank were new technologies that influenced WW1 the most. One machine gun could wipe out the entire line, “German machine-guns went through

Military doctors on the front identified this problem as shell-shock. This term came about due to battle conflict, when soldiers were exposed to issues that lay outside their normal realm of experiences. Many in the military found out that they were ill-equipped mentally for handling war’s harsh realities. Such carnage can impact both the individual and their fellow soldiers. Originally, military commanders were unsympathetic to what the soldiers were experiencing. Instead they would brand the fighters as cowards and had them shot. Even though they were suffering from mental anxiety, due to various battle conditions (Fenton, 2006).