Understanding Changes

The Civil War occurred in an era when modern psychiatric terms and understanding did not yet exist. Men who exhibited what today would be termed war-related anxieties were thought to have character flaws or underlying physical problems. Constricted breath and palpitations---a condition called “soldiers heart” or “irritable heart” ---was blamed on exertion or knapsack straps drawn too tightly across soldiers’ chests. Asylum records show one frequently listed “cause” of mental breakdown was “masturbation.”

 

Enlistments typically lasted three years. Conditions contributed to what Civil War doctors called "nostalgia," a centuries-old term for despair and homesickness so severe that soldiers became listless and emaciated and sometimes died. Military and medical officials recognized nostalgia as a serious "camp disease," but generally blamed it on "feeble will," "moral turpitude" and inactivity in camp. Few sufferers were discharged or granted furloughs, and the recommended treatment was drilling and shaming of "nostalgic"  soldiers---or better yet, "the excitement of an active campaign," meaning combat.