Bluebirds, bombings, and battle : shell shock in Maritime nursing sisters of the first world war

Abstract

While the majority of the Canadian nursing sisters who served during the First World War returned home physically unscathed, very little has been said about those who returned home who had suffered mentally over the course of their military service. With origins in Victorian ideas on illness and gender, shell shock has long been associated with war and masculinity. Nursing sisters too began showing symptoms of shell shock, just as male soldiers did. Long periods of work with no rest and air raids were some of the major contributing factors to the deterioration of their condition. While there was no hesitancy in treating the nursing sisters who were struggling, very rarely were they ever explicitly diagnosed with shell shock itself. Instead, they often received similar diagnoses, such as nervous debility and neurasthenia, which were more in line with conventional ideas about illness and gender.