In the final months of 1914, medical officers on the Western Front began seeing a new kind of casualty. Soldiers who had no physical injury were displaying a wide range of alarming symptoms. Some appeared to be completely dazed or were shaking uncontrollably, others had lost their sense of taste or smell, or were suffering from blindness, mutism and various kinds of paralysis.
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Available from the Spectator Bookshop, £25 Tel: 08430 600033. Peter Parker is the author of The Last Veteran: Harry Patch and the Legacy of War, as well as biographies of J.R. Ackerley and Christopher Isherwood.
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