- Title
- 'The unseen enemy persists’: Delusion, Trauma and the South African War in Australian Asylum Case Notes
- Creator
- Karageorgos, Effie
- Relation
- Social History of Medicine Vol. 36, Issue 2, p. 316-336
- Publisher Link
- http://dx.doi.org/10.1093/shm/hkac049
- Publisher
- Oxford University Press
- Resource Type
- journal article
- Date
- 2023
- Description
- Australian troops travelling to South Africa in 1899 to join Britain in fighting the Boers left behind communities consumed with the conflict. The colonies that would form the Australian nation in 1901 organised parades, concerts and eagerly awaited news from the battlefield. This article analyses these cultural responses to the South African War alongside the experiences of institutionalised delusional men. It traces ways the conflict penetrated the walls of Australian asylums, and the minds of the insane within them, as well as the sane existing in society. Delusions based on the conflict appeared not only in the words of men who had travelled to South Africa, but also those who were evidently deeply affected by Australian involvement in the war, following the fervour within the societies from which they came. The resulting analysis of the words and experiences of the insane expands the historiography of the conflict in new ways.
- Subject
- South African war; Australia; trauma; delusions; asylums
- Identifier
- http://hdl.handle.net/1959.13/1482662
- Identifier
- uon:50994
- Identifier
- ISSN:0951-631X
- Rights
- © The Author(s) 2023. Published by Oxford University Press on behalf of the Society for the Social History of Medicine. This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs licence (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/), which permits non-commercial reproduction and distribution of the work, in any medium, provided the original work is not altered or transformed in any way, and that the work is properly cited. For commercial re-use, please contact journals.permissions@oup.com
- Language
- eng
- Full Text
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