Virtual Trivia
Question 23: Soldier’s Heart
April 23, 2021
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| Dr. Jacob Da Costa identified what he called "Irritable Heart," a diagnosis that affected many Civil War soldiers and was similar to what modern physicians would call PTSD. |
After he returned home, Henry Parsons of Georgetown, Connecticut, who served in Company E of the 23rd Regiment, would not do something. What was it?
- Sleep in a bed
- Fire his rifle
- Share his food
- Take a bath
After he returned home, Henry Parsons would never sleep in a bed, preferring the floor.
War induced psychological trauma was first identified by doctors in WWI. Abundant evidence suggests that Civil War soldiers also suffered from what we now term Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD), though 19th-century physicians did not have the scientific understanding of psychological trauma that their 20th and 21st century counterparts do. Civil War doctors and soldiers themselves didn’t see a connection between war and mental breakdowns, and left little direct evidence about psychological injuries. In 1862, Philadelphia physician Jacob Da Costa identified a condition he called "Irritable Heart," characterized by chest pain, rapid and irregular pulse, difficulty breathing, tunnel vision, fatigue, headaches, difficulty sleeping, bad dreams, and more. However, he never assumed that men who suffered from irritable heart were, by definition, traumatized by their battlefield experience. A few years after the war, some military physicians began to look into possible cardiac causes of insanity. But, even when leading military doctors turned to the heart’s role in insanity, they stopped short of a kind of emotional explanation for what they observed.