Railway spine
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Railway spine was a nineteenth-century diagnosis for the post-traumatic symptoms of passengers involved in railroad accidents.
The first full length medical study of the condition was John Eric Erichsen's On Railway and Other Injuries of the Nervous System, published in 1864. For this reason, railway spine is often known as "Erichsen's disease" too.
Many physicians thought that the symptoms were due to the "excessive speeds" (about 30 mph) of the trains, and that the human body could not cope with speeds that fast. It was later found to be purely psychological in origin, and no longer exists as a valid disorder.
\"Railway Spine\"
See also
Post-traumatic stress disorder Shaken Baby Syndrome Whiplash
Now called Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD)
Called PTSD since the Vietnam War, this condition had a long and interesting history. This stress syndrome has been called many things in the 150 years since it was first recognized but every definition had several characteristics in common, including re-experiencing, numbing and physiological arousal. The process of Darwinian "natural selection" supported the evolution of people with highly developed stress responses; those pre-historic people with the most effective "fight or flight" reflexes became our ancestors. Curiously, during the 19th Century, what is known today as PTSD was called "Railway Spine" and was associated with what we would today call "hysterical" physical symptoms -- i.e. "anxiety" expressed as bodily complaints -- seen in people who had been involved in railway accidents but who suffered no obvious bodily injuries.
External links
- [The railway accident: trains, trauma and technological crisis in nineteenth-century Britain]
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