Newspaper interview request

[Fred Shapiro]

On Tue, 25 Mar 2003, James A. Landau wrote:

> handling battlefield stress.  OED gives a first citation of 1915 from the
> "Brit. Med. Jnl".  By saying that a soldier had "shell shock" it was possible

OED's first use is dated 11 Dec. 1915.  Here is a slight antedating:

1915 _N.Y. Times_ 30 Oct. 2  Cases of loss of speech following shell shock
are being cured by the use of anaesthetics, according to a report in The
Lancet, made by Dr. A. P. Procter.

Of course, the Lancet article referred to would probably push the term
back a little further.

Fred Shapiro


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Fred R. Shapiro                             Editor
Associate Librarian for Collections and     YALE DICTIONARY OF QUOTATIONS
  Access and Lecturer in Legal Research     Yale University Press,
Yale Law School                             forthcoming
e-mail: fred.shapiro at yale.edu               http://quotationdictionary.com
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