Treatment: On the Home Front

Abstract

From its first appearance in the autumn of 1914, when cases of lost speech and limb paralysis began to arrive in Britain, doctors, generals and politicians disputed the likely origins and best treatments of shell shock; they also set about establishing a makeshift treatment network to allow the evacuation of casualties across the Channel. In the first few months of the war this system delivered men haphazardly, wherever beds were free, to asylums, specialist hospitals and general wards. As the number of cases began to rise steadily, it became obvious that a specialist state hospital was necessary, and ‘D’Block at Netley was quickly converted into a reception and clearing centre.¹ Having established this first base towards the end of 1914, a special investigation into the needs of patients was made, and in December the Moss Side State Institute at Maghull was taken over by the War Office. However, the continued sharp rise in the number of cases meant that even with Maghull all the available places quickly filled. Many patients were, as a result, still going into the neurological sections of general hospitals in early 1915, but the more seriously disturbed went to specialist hospitals such as the National Hospital for Paralysed and Epileptic, Queen Square, London, which opened a specialist ward in February 1915.²