Did soldiers of ancient battles get ptsd? Or medieval or renaissance times warriors? Or is ptsd a modern warfare phenomenon?
>>908505
Yes. Shakespeare's Hotspur clearly has it, as do several ancient heroes.
Prior to the development of modern medicine you're going to find it very difficult to find modern medical definitions for illnesses. Obviously.
>>908507
Who were the ancient heroes you mentioned? Are they from ancient myths and stories like Shakespeare or historical records and documents?
>>908512
Can't remember off the top of my head. They were heroes so fictionalised.
>>908512
Herodotus writes:
>In this fight at Marathon there were slain of the Barbarians about six thousand four hundred men, and of the Athenians a hundred and ninety and two. Such was the number which fell on both sides; and it happened also that a marvel occurred there of this kind: an Athenian, Epizelos the son of Cuphagoras, while fighting in the close combat and proving himself a good man, was deprived of the sight of his eyes, neither having received a blow in any part of his body nor having been hit with a missile, and for the rest of his life from this time he continued to be blind: and I was informed that he used to tell about that which had happened to him a tale of this kind, namely that it seemed to him that a tall man in full armour stood against him, whose beard overshadowed his whole shield; and this apparition passed him by, but killed his comrade who stood next to him. Thus, as I was informed, Epizelos told the tale.
Read Achilles in Vietnam that compares 'nam vets with the story told in the Iliad.
>>908505
They pretty clearly did, but there's been a lot of research on it and it happens at a much higher rate under certain conditions. Prolonged battle is one of them as well as prolonged periods of not knowing who/where you're fighting. When you're exposed to "battle stress" for extended periods of time you're more likely to get it.
So you see it at really high rates during ww1 due to the constant shelling (lower rates when trench units were switched out as not all armies did that) and thus the prolonged rate of exposure to the stress. You also see it at high rates in places like the Middle East where you have soldiers that never know who they're fighting or when they'll be attacked (IEDS, etc.).
Then you have ww2 with lower rates than ww1 because in many places it was a different type of war with offensives and battles as opposed to constant trench stuff. I think I read somewhere that it happened a lot in places like bastogne and Stalingrad.
>>908524
IIRC, I've been told the sense of uncertainty and powerlessness is one of the major factors. That the feeling of having no influence on whether or not you die is the mind killer. Hence why constant shelling produces so many cases. You can't do shit about it, but hope you don't get hit.
Even makes sense in the context of >>908523, he didn't survive the apparition because he was strong, he survived because it simply chose his comrade.
We surely did not have any remorse when we built human pyramids with chink corpses
>>908524
>the constant shelling
shelling in ww1 was not constant even in the hottest sectors
simple logistics would not allow it
>>908524
I have also heard it argued that modern warfare with guns and bombs, while less brutal than melee combat, is much more psychologically stressful because the battle makes much less rational sense, whereas sticking someone with a spear and watching him die in front of you, while grisly, is much more straightforward and easily processed by the deep, primitive parts of our brain that handle fear response.
>>908523
quality reply. Here's another (you)
>>908508
>This mental disorder has only been recently discovered so before that it never happened
>>908505
Likely they did , but at much lower rates than nowadays, and much less documented. It only starts being seen as something not individual after the Napoleonic Wars, when it was called "soldier's nostalgia".
Then you have all the development since then, like WW1 shell shock. As the other anon explained better, it has to do with prolonged periods of combat and alertness.
>>908505
In the last century of the Roman empire doctors posted on the frontier often wrote they had trouble with soldiers that had battle fatigue and similar things. The idea is that especially these frontier soldiers who were under constant stress developed this PTSD like condition.
>>909761
that's not what he said moron
>>908505
Yes. Almost every single culture speaks of warriors being haunted by the ghosts of those they kill in their sleep and if warriors turned alcoholic.
The problem with what you're asking is that there were no medical definitions for it at the time. So you have to look through histories and myths and folklore and try to find passages of shit that sounds similar.
>>908705
>first five days of Verdun
>German artillery fires 1,000,000 shells over a 19 mile line
>not constant
Pretty fucking close enough, my friend.
bamp for interest
I feel like modern warfare makes it more common. In sword and shield times you could at least control the action somewhat, whereas nowadays you can get shot from hundreds of meters away and have no control
>>908505
They learned a lot about treatment after WWI.
Had to do with the French allowing their injured soldiers to convalesce far behind the lines, while the Brits kept theirs much closer. French results were horrible when they tried to reintroduce these troops to the battlefield, while British rates of success were much higher.
Of course, all of this was forgotten by the time WW2 rolled around.
>>908505
Symptoms similar to PTSD are found throughout a number of renaissance playwrights, like Marlowe and Shakespeare, so that suggests to me that they had some basis in reality which carried over to theater.
>>908512
odysseus cries when hes retelling his story at the phaiaks
could be interpreted as PTSD
>>911794
Holy shit, this place isn't bad.
It's like I died and went to a board with intelligent posters.
>>911799
that was the best (you) i ever got
thank you you disgusting niggerloving communist
>>911808
You're very welcome.
>>911799
Stay here for another month, then say that again. /pol/ has ruined this place.
>>912150
Stop chasing ghosts. /pol/ has very little influence here.
>>912204
>redpill me on X
>the joos are responsible
>beady little eyes
Yeah, sure...
Keep in mind that PTSD is a lot more effective now. The advent of modern, mechanised warfare, which is so alien to the human thought process, has created psychological trauma never before seen by earlier man.
The scale and speed of destruction and death was simply incomprehensible to many who fought in World War I. No one had ever seen anything like it before.
>>912204
>Why is x like this?
>"obviously because they're niggers lol"
>"because of a highly orchestrated jewish conspiracy!"
Every fucking thread.
>>912379
When it's every thread and it immediately devolves into morons slinging maymays at each other, yes.
>>908505
I haven't sen this mentioned in the thread yet, there's accounts of Norse (or Scandinavian, I forget the era) soldiers who slowly go mad after coming home from a war or raid and eventually are forced to live in the wild as quasi-feral hermits.
Well I would rather have a honorable duel man to man than die from some stray bullet or missile.
>>912391
>man to man dueling
you would be in a claustrophobically packed formation with a spear and a shield trying to block and parry the opposing mass of spears that are jutting past your head and skewering your comrades
>>908505
They'd get nightmares but they shouldn't get shell shock.
Early in Storm of Steel Ernst describes very small things making him jump because they sound like explosions.
War & Peace I think it's Pierre who mentions hearing the sound of cannons and screams when sleeping but doesn't really care much about it.
The same topic of this came up on /lit/ or somewhere a year or more ago and I remember this book being recommended
>>911774
Dude
In Napoleonic Warfare, you could be blown from hundreds meters away just like now, but you could also see dozens of thousands of your comrads die in a single day
Nowdays, the average US soldier will see like 10 of his fellow soldiers die in a spawn of 5 years
>>912150
This board is less than half a year old. The board culture has barely settled. If it's already 'ruined' it was never good to begin with.
>remember when /b/ was good?
>>908505
PTSD didn't exist in those times because there weren't any mean comments on twitter yet
>>912359
lol no
The difference between today and ancient times is that war between tribes and city states was much more common. The modern concept of a permanent peace was non-existent in antiquity. In an age with a very low life expectancy for everyone and no modern medicine to keep things like simple scrapes from turning into life threatening infections, death on the battlefield has a much less psychological impact
>>912604
You are a complete idiot. Just wanted to make sure you knew.
Fucking comparing Napoleonic war fare to any war in the 20th century. Jesus.
>>912638
This board is more than half a year old
>>913115
This board was made 25 years ago.
>>908505
It's not the fight that traumatizes soldiers, it's the helplessness in the face of death. So PTSD is extremely more common nowadays with artillery and air strikes than it was in ancient battles.
>>913303
PTSD is more easily diagnosed these days, not necessarily more common. Without any real records of it, all we can do is hypothesise and guess base on records of people suffering from something that sounds like PTSD.
I'm sorry for the anecdotal evidence, but a friend of mine doing his psychology PhD once told me that PTSD can be relative based on culture and prior experience. It's possible then that if you lived in a society and time where death and conflict was a part of everyday life, you'd be more resilient to it than a modern soldier going into battle for the first time. Feel free to dispel my illusion if I misinterpreted him though.
