Category Archives: Posts

BBC Radio 4 – Home Front – The shell shock epidemic of WW1 For my weekly blog post I chose this article written by the BBC. It is a very useful article for my digital project. The article mentions that the British military believed that shell shock was caused by a shaking of the brain. […]

This TikTok gives a brief overview of the historical hysteria diagnosis and demonstrates how problematic it was. If a woman displayed any signs of being hormonal or emotional, they were seen as having a mental illness. The fact that it wasn’t removed from the DSM till 1980 is shocking!

For my resource blog post this week I have chosen this short clip released by the British War Archives. The video depicts a man who is clearly struggling to function, stumbling all over the room. The end of the video shows the previously ailed soldier as now clean cut. This clip does a great job […]

For my digital essay, I will begin with some background information about the Salem Witch Trials for a paragraph or two and then introduce some theories that historians have for what caused the strange, medical symptoms in the young girls that sparked the witch panic. I will then explain the history of hysteria, what the […]

For my resource blog post this week I chose this meme about trauma and shell shock after the Great War. This relates to my digital project this semester because the stigma around shell shock being an excuse was prominent in the military. This stigma was profound amongst the highest ranks as is seen in this […]

This short video provides some background knowledge of the events leading up to the Salem Witchcraft Trials of 1692. When young women began to have “fits” and behaved strangely, Puritan doctors deemed that there was no medical reason for their ailments, so they must be under a witch’s possession. Their symptoms included seizures, hallucinations, pain […]

This video does a great job at explaining how the term Shell Shock emerged after World War I. It also does a good job at explaining how the military community had a hard time determining whether it was a physical injury or just a mental health problem. The video does a good job mentioning that […]

Here is the link to my project proposal and bibliography on the topic of Colonial Hysteria.

https://www.mirror.co.uk/news/uk-news/haunting-portraits-disturbed-female-patients-12198741 I found some vintage images of women in 19th century asylums that demonstrate what Hysterical and Anorexic patients looked like back then. Since we are learning about women in asylums this week, I thought that some cool visuals would be an interesting contribution.