A war of nerves - Ben Shephard

From shell-shock to Post Traumatic Stress Disorder, the fascinating story of how psychiatrists have tried to keep men fighting.

The first case of shell-shock arrived at the Duchess of Westminster's Hospital - in the casino at Le Touquet - in September 1914. "I wish you could be here," the Oxford Professor of Medicine wrote to a friend, "in this orgy of neuroses and psychoses and gaits and paralyses. I cannot imagine what has got into the central nervous system of the men."

A War of Nerves is a history of military psychiatry in the 20th century. It reaches back to the Western Front when modern war and medicine first met, and traces their uneasy relationship through the eras of shell-shock, combat fatigue, post-traumatic stress disorder and Gulf War syndrome. Rich in character and detail and drawing on a vast range of unpublished diaries, interviews and papers, the book is at once an absorbing historical narrative and an intellectual detective story.