Soldier's Heart Research Articles

Book Review: Samet, E. D. (2007). Soldier's Heart: Reading Literature through Peace and War at West Point. New York: Farrar, Straus, and Giroux

Book Review: Samet, E. D. (2007). Soldier's Heart: Reading Literature through Peace and War at West Point. New York: Farrar, Straus, and Giroux

Historical approaches to post-combat disorders.

Almost every major war in the last century involving western nations has seen combatants diagnosed with a form of post-combat disorder. Some took a psychological form (exhaustion, combat fatigue, combat stress reaction and post-traumatic stress disorder), while others were characterized by medically unexplained symptoms (soldier's heart, effort syndrome, shell shock, non-ulcer dyspepsia, effects of Agent Orange and Gulf War Syndrome). Although many of these disorders have common symptoms, the explanations attached to them showed considerable diversity often reflected in the labels themselves. These causal hypotheses ranged from the effects of climate, compressive forces released by shell explosions, side effects of vaccinations, changes in diet, toxic effects of organophosphates, oil-well fires or depleted-uranium munitions. Military history suggests that these disorders, which coexisted in the civilian population, reflected popular health fears and emerged in the gaps left by the advance of medical science. While the current Iraq conflict has yet to produce a syndrome typified by medically unexplained symptoms, it is unlikely that we have seen the last of post-combat disorders as past experience suggests that they have the capacity to catch both military planners and doctors by surprise.

Dark Humors and Soldier's Heart: Understanding Depression and Its Remedies

Dark Humors and Soldier's Heart: Understanding Depression and Its Remedies

The US Army Center for Cardiovascular Diseases, 1918 US Army General Hospital No. 9, Lakewood, NJ

This is the final paper in a series of five that Dr. Wooley wrote exclusively for The American Heart Hospital Journal, based on his book, The Irritable Heart of Soldiers and the Origins of Anglo-American Cardiology: The US Civil War (1861) to World War I (1918), published by Ashgate Publishing in 2002.1 Dr. Wooley's book also casts light on the origins of the specialty heart hospital.—Sylvan Lee Weinberg, MD, Editor in Chief

Review: The Irritable Heart of Soldiers and the Origins of Anglo-American Cardiology: The U.S. Civil War (1861) to World War I (1918)

Review: The Irritable Heart of Soldiers and the Origins of Anglo-American Cardiology: The U.S. Civil War (1861) to World War I (1918)

The Royal Victoria Hospital at Netley, England

This is the second in a series of five papers that Dr. Wooley wrote exclusively for The American Heart Hospital Journal based on his book, The Irritable Heart of Soldiers and the Origins of Anglo-American Cardiology, published by Ashgate Publishing in 2002.1 Dr. Wooley's book also casts light on the origins of the specialty heart hospital.

The Military Heart Hospitals

This is the first in a series of four papers that Dr. Wooley wrote exclusively for The American Heart Hospital Journal based on his book, The Irritable Heart of Soldiers and the Origins of Anglo-American Cardiology, published by Ashgate Publishing in 2002.1 Dr. Wooley's book also casts light on the origins of the specialty heart hospital.

The Irritable Heart of Soldiers and the Origins of Anglo-American Cardiology: The US Civil War (1861) to World War I (1918) (review)

The Irritable Heart of Soldiers and the Origins of Anglo-American Cardiology: The US Civil War (1861) to World War I (1918) (review)

Book Review: The Irritable Heart of Soldiers and the Origins of Anglo-American Cardiology. The US Civil War (1861) to World War I (1918)

Book Review: The Irritable Heart of Soldiers and the Origins of Anglo-American Cardiology. The US Civil War (1861) to World War I (1918)

The Irritable Heart of Soldiers and the Origins of Anglo-American Cardiology: The US Civil War (1861) to World War I (1918),

The Irritable Heart of Soldiers and the Origins of Anglo-American Cardiology: The US Civil War (1861) to World War I (1918),

Book Review The Irritable Heart of Soldiers and the Origins of Anglo-American Cardiology: The U.S. Civil War (1861) to World War I (1918) (The History of Medicine in Context.) By Charles F. Wooley. 321 pp. Aldershot, Hampshire, England, Ashgate, 2002. $99.95. 0-7546-0595-7

Book Review The Irritable Heart of Soldiers and the Origins of Anglo-American Cardiology: The U.S. Civil War (1861) to World War I (1918) (The History of Medicine in Context.) By Charles F. Wooley. 321 pp. Aldershot, Hampshire, England, Ashgate, 2002. $99.95. 0-7546-0595-7

The Irritable Heart of Soldiers and the Origins of Anglo American Cardiology: the US Civil War (1861) to World War I (1918)

One of the striking characteristics of twentieth century medicine was its domination by Anglo-Saxon attitudes and ideas—sustained by the close, almost symbiotic, ties between leading researchers in Britain and the United States. That relationship may be more one-sided than it once was, but it is still heartening to reflect just how many of the important innovations originated from British shores—including antibiotics, of course, but also intraocular implants, hip replacements, CT scanners, in-vitro fertilization, Sir James Black's pharmaceutical discoveries and much else besides. The transatlantic medical shuffle between the two countries stretches back a long way—Sir William Osler's translation from Johns Hopkins to Oxford being an obvious example—but probably the most significant event was the flood of young American research-oriented doctors who arrived in Britain in 1917 soon after the United States entered the First World War. Charles Woolley, Emeritus Professor of Medicine at Ohio State University, locates the origins of what would prove to be the very fruitful Anglo-American cooperation in cardiology to a truly remarkable coming together of doctors from the two countries at the 700-bedded Military Heart Hospital in Colchester. The US medical officers posted to the hospital—all of whom subsequently would become leaders in their field—included Samuel Levine, Marcus Rothschild and Frank Wilson while the British consulting staff included (amazingly) Sir William Osler, Sir James Mackenzie, John Parkinson, Sir Clifford Allbutt and Thomas Lewis. It is difficult to imagine a more distinguished roll call or a more stimulating environment, heightened by the intellectual challenge posed by the condition for which the hospital had been established—the enigma of ‘soldier's heart’. Fifty years earlier Jacob da Costa had described a syndrome of pain, palpitations, shortness of breath and tachycardia in combatants of the American Civil War, and now thousands of soldiers were being invalided out of the trenches in Northern France with precisely the same symtomatology. But was this an organic disease—as Sir Clifford Allbutt maintained—whose unique pattern of symptoms and frequently noted regurgitant murmurs seemed characteristic of diseased heart muscle? Or was it, as Thomas Lewis maintained, a functional disorder—an ‘effort’ syndrome mimicking the typical features of excess effort in men while they were still at rest. The resolution of this clinical conundrum was obviously highly relevant in deciding whether the invalided soldiers should be discharged on the grounds of incapacity for duty. But it also touched on the whole spectrum of recent physiological investigations into the control of the heartbeat and cardiac muscle contractility. Soldier's heart was, in short, a big issue and a testing ground for the scientific credentials of the nascent discipline of cardiology. And if that were not enough to make Charles Woolley's account worth reading, he has been helped vastly by one of those all too rare jewels of medical history—a contemporaneous account of the personalities and events at the military hospital as recorded in Samuel Levine's wartime diaries. Levine is both an astute observer and an elegant stylist, so his portraits of Osler, Mackenzie, Lewis and his fellow American medical officers are of immense value. Particularly memorable is his account of Sir William Osler's brilliant and sympathetic display of clinical skills at the bedside just a few days after his beloved and only son Revere had been killed in action at the front. Woolley's book might have been better organized and would have benefited from a wider perspective to include the experience of those afflicted by soldier's heart—but there is so much else going for it these are mere quibbles. It concludes with a retrospective verdict on the conflicting views over the aetiology of soldier's heart, which is particularly relevant in this age of Gulf War syndrome and chronic fatigue.

From shell shock and war neurosis to posttraumatic stress disorder: a history of psychotraumatology

The term posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) has become a household name since its first appearance in 1980 in the third edition of the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM-lll) purblished by the American Psychiatric Association, In the collective mind, this diagnosis is associated with the legacy of the Vietnam War disaster. Earlier conflicts had given birth to terms, such as "soldier's heart, " "shell shock," and "war neurosis." The latter diagnosis was equivalent to the névrose de guerre and Kriegsneurose of French and German scientific literature. This article describes how the immediate and chronic consequences of psychological trauma made their way into medical literature, and how concepts of diagnosis and treatment evolved over time.

The Epidemic of Heart Disease Amongst British Soldiers During the First World War

A huge epidemic of 'heart disease'-a disease given the popular name of the 'soldier's heart'-occurred in British soldiers during the First World War. Those affected were almost exclusively members of the British Expeditionary Force and almost all were in France. Although heart disease had occurred in both British and American armies in previous wars, the threads connecting this disease with heart disease in any previous wars are sparse, and, although the disease continued to be reported in civilian life after the war, it was essentially a 'disease' of soldiers at war. This article examines the so-called epidemic, considers the explanations offered as to its cause, and questions whether the epidemic ever in fact existed. The role of Sir Thomas Lewis, the heart specialist put in charge of the special military hospital to deal with the large number of cases, is critical in this account.

Soldiers, Psychiatrists, and Combat Trauma

stricken Front Line, where the panic and stampede of some ghastly experience was re-enacted among the livid faces of the dead. Accounts of reenactment, to use Sassoon's wonderfully apt term, are to be found in the letters, diaries, memoirs, poetry, fiction, and nonfiction of many combat soldiers of many wars. Such episodes are represented as if they had been reexperienced, not remembered. Owen, for instance, does not merely remember a comrade's failure to get his gas mask on in time; he relives it: In all my dreams, before my helpless sight, He plunges at me, guttering, choking, drowning.' Reenactment can become a morbid condition, as Lessing suggests in an essay about her father, also a soldier during World War I: His childhood and young man's memory's kept fluid, were added to, grew, as living memories do. But his war memories were congealed in stories that he told again and again, with the same words and gestures, in stereotyped phrases. These stories, she goes on, comprised this dark region in him.2 The morbid realm of reenactment is perhaps the cruelest feature of the disorder variously labeled soldier's heart, shell shock, combat fatigue, and posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD). Each term marks the psychiatric casualties of a succession of modern wars-

Soldier's Heart

Soldier's Heart

Soldier's Heart: Survivors' Views of Combat Trauma

Soldier's Heart: Survivors' Views of Combat Trauma

Review of Soldier's heart: Survivors' views of combat trauma.

Review of Soldier's heart: Survivors' views of combat trauma.

History and epidemiology of panic

The conceptualisation and investigation of panic disorder have developed on two different axes, medical and psychological, for more than 100 years. In medicine, reports of acute anxiety attacks with cardiac, circulatory, and respiratory symptoms date back to the French Revolution, and terms such as “soldier's heart”, “neurocirculatory neurasthenia”, or “hyperventilation syndrome” have been used to describe them. In psychological medicine, anxiety attacks were first reported by Domrich in 1849. These attacks, which were thought to be caused by strong emotions, were classified mainly within neurasthenia, until Freud created the concept of anxiety neurosis in 1895.

From irritable heart to mitral valve prolapse—World War I, the British experience and Thomas Lewis

The lineage of mitral valve prolapse and the mitral valve prolapse syndrome as described in the mid-late 1900s may be traced through the evolution of thought about functional heart disease as defined in the midlate 1800s. 1 A key issue in tracing this lineage involves the entity described by DaCosta 2 as “irritable heart” in the U.S. Civil War, and redefined in England as “soldier's heart” and the “effort syndrome” 3 during World War I. A key figure in the British experience with soldier's heart and the effort syndrome was Thomas Lewis.