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SHAW, G. B.—SHELL-SHOCK

Christian Temperance Union, serving for six years. She was also associated after 1886 with the National American Woman's Suffrage Association as lecturer, vice-president-at-large, and from 1904-15 as president, when she declined reelection. She had spoken in every state, before many state Legislatures, and before Congressional committees. She was a member of the International Council of Women; the International Suffrage Alliance; the National Society for Broader Education and the League to Enforce Peace. In 1917 she was appointed chairman of the woman's committee of the Council of National Defense, and in 1918 edited for this committee a department in the Ladies' Home Journal. She died at Moylan, Pa., July 2 1919, shortly after the passage of the suffrage amendment to the Federal Constitution by Congress. Her last message was an appeal to women to use their influence for the ratification of the League of Nations. She was the author of The Story of a Pioneer (1915, with Elizabeth Jordan) and joint editor of The Yellow Ribbon Speaker (1891, with Alice Stone Blackwell and Lucy Elmira Anthony).


SHAW, GEORGE BERNARD (1856- ), British dramatist (see 24.812), produced on the London stage subsequently to 1910 Fanny's First Play (1911), Overruled (1912), Androcles and the Lion and Great Catherine (1913) and Pygmalion and The Music Cure (1914). He also produced in Dublin, or at special per- formances in London, the one-act plays O'Flaherty, V.C. and Augustus does his Bit (both satires on problems of the World War), The Inca of Jerusalem and Annajanska, and published a three-act play Heartbreak House (1919), produced in New York, and also in a German version in Vienna in Nov. 1920. A few months after the outbreak of war he published, as a special supplement to The New Statesman, an outspoken deliverance on " Common Sense and the War," which occasioned much comment and earned him some unpopularity. In 1921 he published Back to Methuselah. (See ENGLISH LITERATURE.)

SHAW, JOHN BYAM (1872-1919), English painter, was born at Madras Nov. 13 1872, the son of John Shaw, registrar of the high court of Madras. He came to England in 1878, and his first art teaching was obtained at the St. John's Wood school of art. He entered the Royal Academy schools in 1889, and his picture " Rose Mary " was hung in 1893. One of his best-known works was " Love the Conqueror " (1899). He illustrated a great number of books, among them being Browning's Poems (1898); Tales from Boccaccio (1899); Pilgrim's Progress (1904); Edgar Allan Poe's Tales (1900), etc. In 1911 he established, with Rex Vicat Cole (b. 1870), a school of art at Kensington. He died in London Jan. 26 1919.


SHAW, RICHARD NORMAN (1831-1912), English architect (see 24.813), died at Hampstead Nov. 17 1912.


SHAW, SIR WILLIAM NAPIER (1854- ), British meteorologist, was born at Birmingham, March 4 1854. He was educated at King Edward's school, Birmingham, Emmanuel College, Cambridge, of which he became a fellow in 1877, and the university of Berlin. From 1887-99 he was university lecturer in experimental physics at Cambridge, from 1898-9 assistant director of the Cavendish laboratory, and from 1890-9 senior tutor of Emmanuel College. In 1891 he was elected a fellow of the Royal Society. In 1897 he became a member of the Meteorological Council, and was from 1900 to 1905 its secretary, in the latter year being appointed director of the Meteorological Office. In 1907 he became reader in meteorology in the university of Lon- don. He was president of the mathematical and physical section of the British Association in 1908 and of the educational section in 1919, and in 1919 was president of the International Confer- ence of Meteorologists held in Paris. He was knighted in 1915, and in 1920 retired from his position at the Meteorological Office. Sir Napier Shaw's works include Life History of Surface Air Currents (with R. G. K. Lempfert, 1906); Air Currents and the Laws of Ventilation (1907); Forecasting Weather (1911); Manual of Meteorology (1919) ; besides many papers in scientific journals and valuable reports of meteorological and other subjects. He received many honours and distinctions, including the Symons medal of the Royal Meteorological Society.


SHELL-SHOCK, the popular name given during the World War to an obscure form of nervous disease which became rife among the armies. The term "shell-shock" appears to have been officially adopted in Great Britain in 1916, although cases to which this term might have been equally applicable had oc- curred in the English and French armies from the beginning of the war and onwards. It is probable, although it is not recorded, that similar cases occurred in previous bloody wars; but never before have such vast numbers of men been subjected to such terrific strain, dangers and horrors from forces generated by explosives. In consequence thereof the term "shell-shock," applied to all forms of war psycho-neurosis, found ready accept- ance by the press and public, but by neurologists it was generally regarded as a misnomer unless it were strictly limited to cases of concussion or commotion of the brain directly caused by the violence of the forces generated by the explosion.

Early in the war, and subsequently, cases of sudden death of groups of men without visible external signs of injury were recorded. They were particularly noted when the explosive forces were generated in confined spaces, where percussion and repercussion would be intensified in their effects upon the cerebro- spinal fluid, which acts as a water-jacket to the central nervous system and especially protects the vital centres in the medulla from concussion. Carbon-monoxide poisoning was also con- sidered a possible cause of such a death, and especially was this likely in the case of explosion of mines or the imperfect detona- tion of shells in closed spaces, such as dugouts, saps or ravines. The great majority of cases diagnosed as " shell-shock " were not commotional in origin, but emotional, and due in most in- stances to the existence in the sufferer of an inborn timorous, neuropathic or psychopathic disposition; but in a certain number of cases an emotional instability was acquired by the prolonged strain and stress of war. Thus fatigue, insomnia, anxiety and infective disease frequently combined to cause a neuro-poten- tially sound individual, with an excellent record of service, to become emotive and to develop "shell-shock," the final break- down having been precipitated by a shell bursting near to him. The present writer had the opportunity of examining post-mor- tem the brain in such a case, and it snowed rupture of minute vessels and haemorrhages into the substance of the brain and cerebro-spinal fluid.

In the absence of objective signs during life, such as ruptured tympanum, and changes in the cerebro-spinal fluid for example, the existence of blood it would be impossible for the medical officers to decide whether such a case was primarily commotional or emotional. This is an important matter, for the former was classed as a battle casualty and entitled the sufferer to a gratuity. The large number of British cases claiming a gratuity for "shell- shock" led to the promulgation of Army Form W 3436, which required circumstantial evidence by an eye-witness of the prox- imity of the soldier to the bursting shell. Even then great difficulties were experienced in coming to a just decision, for a purely commotional case, if not severe, usually recovered more rapidly than an emotional one; consequently a record of service and the severity, character and persistence of symptons had to be taken into account.

The diagnosis of " shell-shock " was made at the Casualty Clearing and Field Ambulance stations, and when a barrage was opened prior to the attack of the enemy, or other intense shell-fire, medical officers at the front-line stations had little time to investigate the numbers of casualties coming in, and until the later period of the war cases of " shell-shock " were sent to the base hospitals. The wish, in a great number of these cases was not to go back to an intolerable situation; and fear, associated with the instinct of self-preservation, arose as an unconscious defence mechanism, and persisted in maintaining such hysteri- cal manifestations as amnesia, tremors, paralyses, contractures, convulsive tics, aphonia, mutism, blindness, deafness and other functional sensori-motor disabilities. Whereas hysterical mani- festations were extremely common in the ranks,they were relative- ly rare among the officers, who suffered from neurasthenia and anxiety neurosis instead. These two forms of psycho-neurosis