A War of Nerves


Book Description

This is a history of military psychiatry in the twentieth century. Both absorbing historical narrative and intellectual detective story, it weaves literary, medical, and military lore to give us a fascinating history of war neuroses and their treatment, from the World Wars through Vietnam and up to the Gulf War.




The War of Nerves


Book Description

A major new history of the Cold War that explores the conflict through the minds of the people who lived through it. More than any other conflict, the Cold War was fought on the battlefield of the human mind. And, nearly thirty years since the collapse of the Soviet Union, its legacy still endures—not only in our politics, but in our own thoughts and fears. Drawing on a vast array of untapped archives and unseen sources, Martin Sixsmith vividly recreates the tensions and paranoia of the Cold War, framing it for the first time from a psychological perspective. Revisiting towering, unique personalities like Khrushchev, Kennedy, and Nixon, as well as the lives of the unknown millions who were caught up in the conflict, this is a gripping narrative of the paranoia of the Cold War—and in today's uncertain times, this story is more resonant than ever.




Peripheral Nerve


Book Description

Buenos Aires psychoanalysts resisting imperialism. Brazilian parasitologists embracing communism as an antidote to rural misery. Nicaraguan revolutionaries welcoming Cuban health cooperation. Chilean public health reformers gauging domestic approaches against their Soviet and Western counterparts. As explored in Peripheral Nerve, these and accompanying accounts problematize existing understandings of how the Cold War unfolded in Latin America generally and in the health and medical realms more specifically. Bringing together scholars from across the Americas, this volume chronicles the experiences of Latin American physicians, nurses, medical scientists, and reformers who interacted with dominant U.S. and European players and sought alternative channels of health and medical solidarity with the Soviet Union and via South-South cooperation. Throughout, Peripheral Nerve highlights how Latin American health professionals accepted, rejected, and adapted foreign involvement; manipulated the rivalry between the United States and the USSR; and forged local variants that they projected internationally. In so doing, this collection reveals the multivalent nature of Latin American health politics, offering a significant contribution to Cold War history. Contributors. Cheasty Anderson, Anne-Emanuelle Birn, Katherine E. Bliss, Gilberto Hochman, Jennifer L. Lambe, Nicole Pacino, Carlos Henrique Assunção Paiva, Jadwiga E. Pieper Mooney, Raúl Necochea López, Marco A. Ramos, Gabriela Soto Laveaga




War of Nerves


Book Description

In this important and revelatory book, Jonathan Tucker, a leading expert on chemical and biological weapons, chronicles the lethal history of chemical warfare from World War I to the present. At the turn of the twentieth century, the rise of synthetic chemistry made the large-scale use of toxic chemicals on the battlefield both feasible and cheap. Tucker explores the long debate over the military utility and morality of chemical warfare, from the first chlorine gas attack at Ypres in 1915 to Hitler’s reluctance to use nerve agents (he believed, incorrectly, that the U.S. could retaliate in kind) to Saddam Hussein’s gassing of his own people, and concludes with the emergent threat of chemical terrorism. Moving beyond history to the twenty-first century, War of Nerves makes clear that we are at a crossroads that could lead either to the further spread of these weapons or to their ultimate abolition.







A History of Nerve Functions


Book Description

Recent developments have extended our knowledge of the basic functions of nerves: notably, the demonstration of the mechanism within nerve fibers which transports a wide range of essential materials. In order to understand how this discovery occurred, it is necessary to examine its history. The story begins in ancient Greece when nerves were conceived of as channels through which animal spirits carried sensory impressions to the brain. As science developed, the discoveries of various physical and chemical agents supplanted the agency of animal spirits until the molecular machinery of transport was recognized. In this fascinating and complete history, Sidney Ochs begins with a chronological look at this path of discovery, followed in the second half by a thematic approach wherein the author describes the electrical nature of the nerve impulse, fiber form and its changes in degeneration and regeneration, reflexes, learning, memory and other higher functions in which transport participates.




Stress in Post-War Britain, 1945–85


Book Description

In the years following World War II the health and well-being of the nation was of primary concern to the British government. The essays in this collection examine the relationship between health and stress in post-war Britain through a series of carefully connected case studies.




The War of the Soups and the Sparks


Book Description

The question of how nerves communicate with one another was the subject of a heated & protracted dispute between pharmacologists & neurophysiologists. This book recalls the debate & how the theory of chemical transmission was eventually confirmed by the discovery of neurotransmitters.




Brain Neurotrauma


Book Description

With the contribution from more than one hundred CNS neurotrauma experts, this book provides a comprehensive and up-to-date account on the latest developments in the area of neurotrauma including biomarker studies, experimental models, diagnostic methods, and neurotherapeutic intervention strategies in brain injury research. It discusses neurotrauma mechanisms, biomarker discovery, and neurocognitive and neurobehavioral deficits. Also included are medical interventions and recent neurotherapeutics used in the area of brain injury that have been translated to the area of rehabilitation research. In addition, a section is devoted to models of milder CNS injury, including sports injuries.




Command Of The Air


Book Description

In the pantheon of air power spokesmen, Giulio Douhet holds center stage. His writings, more often cited than perhaps actually read, appear as excerpts and aphorisms in the writings of numerous other air power spokesmen, advocates-and critics. Though a highly controversial figure, the very controversy that surrounds him offers to us a testimonial of the value and depth of his work, and the need for airmen today to become familiar with his thought. The progressive development of air power to the point where, today, it is more correct to refer to aerospace power has not outdated the notions of Douhet in the slightest In fact, in many ways, the kinds of technological capabilities that we enjoy as a global air power provider attest to the breadth of his vision. Douhet, together with Hugh “Boom” Trenchard of Great Britain and William “Billy” Mitchell of the United States, is justly recognized as one of the three great spokesmen of the early air power era. This reprint is offered in the spirit of continuing the dialogue that Douhet himself so perceptively began with the first edition of this book, published in 1921. Readers may well find much that they disagree with in this book, but also much that is of enduring value. The vital necessity of Douhet’s central vision-that command of the air is all important in modern warfare-has been proven throughout the history of wars in this century, from the fighting over the Somme to the air war over Kuwait and Iraq.