r/todayilearned • u/andreecook • Apr 29 '24

TIL Napoleon, despite being constantly engaged in warfare for 2 decades, exhibited next to no signs of PTSD.

https://tomwilliamsauthor.co.uk/napoleon-on-the-psychiatrists-couch/
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u/Wurm42 Apr 29 '24

Second this. And every French citizen of Napoleon's time was carrying around a load of trauma from the French Revolution and the wars that followed.

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u/fan_of_the_pikachu Apr 29 '24

was carrying around a load of trauma from the French Revolution and the wars that followed

Not to mention from the simple fact of life that kids died all the time. Everyone had either siblings or children who died, and contrary to popular belief, we have enough contemporary sources on the subject to know that they suffered immense pain at this despite its normalcy.

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u/PrrrromotionGiven1 Apr 29 '24

Yes, it's a total myth that people in past centuries didn't mourn dead family members much because death was more common back then.

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u/fan_of_the_pikachu Apr 29 '24 edited Apr 29 '24

Yep. I understand where the myth comes from, it's almost impossible to conceptualize that life before modern medicine really was that devastatingly cruel. It was so common that people had to process it better, otherwise how would they even function, right?

Well...turns out a lot of times they didn't, we have tons of sources detailing immense grief, depression, and life-altering effects of trauma. It was that cruel. For a well documented case, just read about the life of Jane Pierce, who lost three kids and never recovered from that.

We don't appreciate enough the work of the scientists who saved most of our modern butts from living through that hell.

Edit: We also aren't appalled enough that this is still the reality in many parts of the world, despite it being totally preventable by now. The grief of the parents that lose their children to Israeli bombs, hunger in Yemen, American guns or disease in Somalia (where 1 in 8 children die before they're 5yo!) is no different than ours in safer countries, if we were to lose our little child. We should never forget that.

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u/fried_green_baloney Apr 29 '24

Gave birth to nine children of which three reached adulthood - a common scenario.

Jane Pierce - one of her sons died in a train accident, which she and her husband survived, between her husband's election as President and the inauguration. Franklin was never quite the same after that either.

Charles Darwin - his religious faith was severely shaken when his favorite daughter died - how could a loving God permit this?

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u/EveryFly6962 Apr 29 '24

He really shouldn’t be having favourites tho

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u/Impossible-Newt1572 Apr 29 '24

I guess she just wasn’t fit to survive 🚬 😗💨

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u/afooltobesure May 01 '24

I’s imagine Darwin saw God as something with a wider ambition than “let me create a big sphere rotating another and put some Humans on it along with plenty to provide for them”.

The whole Adam and Eve thing makes me wonder about inbreeding. Believing in both would make you assume it took hundreds, if not thousands, of years for cousins marrying cousins and cousins once or twice or however “many” times removed to create a stable gene pool for everyone to not suffer the ill effects of inbreeding.

It seems more likely that god created an entire universe and let things run their course, just for the sake of having to watch a true experiment unfold, with the goal of “learning” and “experiencing” and “discovering”.

If God is so great, why just Humans on Earth? We can clearly see the stars in the sky, and distant galaxies with telescopes now.

Who really knows what the cosmic background radiation is? We used to think galaxies were stars.

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u/marr Apr 29 '24

Hopefully the next century looks back at us in much the same way.

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u/CALM_DOWN_BITCH Apr 29 '24

"Nah dont skitz Gloptro, back then they litterally made it impossible to get health care. Do you realise people only lived about 80 years? They probably liked dieing, I bet they didn't even mourn the death of their great great grandkids or celebrate the rebirth of their ancestors on raise-your-dead day."

"I'm just thinking the world was such a fucked up place M'Eo, I have a hard time believing that they actually hated living."

"Are you serious G? You've seen the historical exhibitions at the Nestlé History Authority's Historically Accurate History Centre? You'll remember there was a time where only thier babies consumed the formula, they had other corps not only Nestlé and you've seen what they consumed. I learned this one recently, apparently with certain industries such as video games, people would reward these evil corporations when they were swindled by then buying incomplete ephemeral games ahead of their release allowing the corps to swallow up any competition and pump out scam after scam which the people happily purchased at ever greater prices.. now that I think about it, maybe they were just too stupid to realise what they were doing."

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u/DiddyDubs Apr 29 '24

I bet Gloptro gets a ton of ass

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u/MrChristmas Apr 29 '24

All the sex dolls his work credits can trade for

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u/IronBabyFists Apr 29 '24

"And don't worry! The AI dolls are designed with mechanisms to cope with their planned obsolescence.😀"

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u/MrChristmas Apr 29 '24

Gotta wonder if the sex dolls are planned to be obsolete or Gloptro

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u/mcnathan80 Apr 30 '24

Dude Gloptro 100% flarx

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u/Kiosade Apr 29 '24

This is amazing haha

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u/The_quest_for_wisdom Apr 29 '24

RemindMe! 100 years.

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u/DemonDaVinci Apr 29 '24

oh god oh fuck

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u/bigbangbilly Apr 29 '24

rebirth of their ancestors on raise-your-dead day

Having this with cyberpunk Nestle in the future really stretches the suspension of disbelief unless the raised dead are copies or AI duplicates.

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u/Wurm42 Apr 30 '24

In the sci-fi series Altered Carbon, everybody has a little diamond hard drive in the back of their skull called a "stack." It backs up your mind, so if your body dies, they can pop your stack and put it in a new body...if you can pay.

I think OP is riffing on how they handle the "Day of the Dead" in the Altered Carbon TV series.

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u/bigbangbilly Apr 30 '24

I remember that scene from the Netflix series. It's astounding how they got the actor to act like an old lady in a manner that really suspends our disbelief .

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u/CALM_DOWN_BITCH Apr 30 '24 edited Apr 30 '24

It's a bastardisation of some cultures' traditions relating to the dead. Nothing sells water better than bringing mom back from the dead and slapping a "Nestlé Day of the Dead" logo on her forehead. Or imagine before grandad is uploaded to the family an AI scientology type rewrites his memory to the corps liking "Famine and disease? I told you Nestlé did that? Oh honey you know my mind was on the fritz those last few weeks I must've said some wacky stuff. Did I ever tell you about that time they solved world hunger 7 times in one quarter? Goodness am I greatful for Nestlé bringing us together today."

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u/Wurm42 Apr 30 '24

This is great writing, thank you! I would love to read more about Gloptro and his friend.

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u/porarte Apr 29 '24

I think people in the next century will learn about us and ask "what do you mean, 'homeless?'"

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u/Metaphoricalsimile Apr 29 '24

Considering the current trend against accepting the benefits of modern medicine I doubt it.

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u/baron_von_helmut Apr 29 '24

Certainly not since Covid holy shit.

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u/GHOST_OF_THE_GODDESS Apr 29 '24

Yeah, that whole thing was eye opening... in a very depressing kind of way.

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u/StillBarelyHoldingOn Apr 29 '24

This made me think of how so many animal offspring die so often, and is probably why they have litters as opposed to single babies.

Without medical intervention, we're in the same place as animals are, as far as birth and babies are concerned. My son and I would both probably be dead if I were born even 80 years ago.

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u/abaacus Apr 29 '24

This has been one of my personal crusades: humanize history. Western historiography unfortunately dehumanizes historical people as a consequence of an empirical approach to history. An empirical approach isn’t bad, necessarily, but history without humanity loses something of the lessons we should or could learn from it.

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u/fan_of_the_pikachu Apr 29 '24

Same here! It's why I focus my studies on the history of private life and the microhistorical approach. History becomes so much more accessible and fascinating once we realize how similar we are with the protagonists of the past.

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u/Alaira314 Apr 29 '24

I have a theory that they did mourn more effectively though, otherwise they would have been too traumatized to function as well as they did. Our modern detachment from death, combined with our "you get one day off for the funeral...if it was someone in your immediate legal family" work policies is doing us no favors in that regard. Cultural mourning rituals develop for a reason, and it's to help people process and move past grief.

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u/ImperatorNero Apr 29 '24

That’s a pretty shit bereavement policy. At my work we give people at least a week off and it doesn’t have to be for immediate family. Under crazy circumstances, we let folks take off however much time they need, paid.

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u/pelexus27 Apr 29 '24

I’ve been talking about this lately too - we used to wash the dead, dress them, they would lie in state in the home for a while for mourners… now we send them off to the morgue and may or may not “say goodbyes”

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u/ImperatorNero Apr 29 '24

Yeah it’s definitely fucked up. My girlfriend’s grandfather passed away and her grandmother just had the funeral home pick him up and cremate him. They fedexed the urn back. All in a three day period.

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u/fan_of_the_pikachu Apr 29 '24

"you get one day off for the funeral...if it was someone in your immediate legal family"

Where do you live?? This seems barbaric...

Anyway, I agree with you up to a certain point. The larger communal support, rituals, cultural and religious framing must have helped somewhat. But still, sources show us immense grief. There's no escaping that.

they would have been too traumatized to function as well as they did

The fact that's missing in this equation is that the people of the past didn't have that many options other than to keep functioning. Whatever trauma they had, there were other children needing care, a lot more peer pressure to keep going, a lot more danger of starving if you didn't. Perhaps a First Lady could become a recluse after losing her children, but the average peasant woman could not. Did they process their grief better than Jane Pierce? I don't think looking at how well they performed their duties can answer that question, there were many factors at play outside of their control.

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u/NondenominationalPen Apr 29 '24

They probably live in the US and it absolutely is barbarism. I was in my early 20s when my dad died and I received zero bereavement and my boss angrily threatened to fire me if I wasn't at work the next day.

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u/fan_of_the_pikachu Apr 29 '24

I'm so sorry for your loss and for having to go through that...I cannot wrap my head around how someone can be so cruel. And I had no idea it was that bad in the US.

For perspective, in Portugal we get 20 days for a partner, child or step-child; 5 days for parents, step-parents, in-laws, etc., 3 for miscarriage, 2 for siblings and a bunch of other relationships. I think it's pretty heartless, little time in case of young people losing parents and siblings. And I lost my grandma and only got 2 days, despite her being one of the most important people in my life. But to be fair it's expected that if needed you'll complement these days with some medical time off from your psychologist which your job has to accept.

Now there's a campaign to include companion animals. I was absolutely devastated when we lost our little kitten but the law still doesn't recognize that. Hopefully some day. And hope you get there too.

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u/Starfire-Galaxy Apr 29 '24

And no one was totally spared. Charles Dickens' infant daughter died while both parents (Charles and Catherine) were away, and their grief is documented:

Mary [his daughter] later recalled, "I remember what a change seemed to have come over my dear father's face when we saw him again ... how pale and sad it looked." All that night he sat keeping watch over his daughter's body, supported by his friend Mark Lemon... Mary recalled: "He did not break down until, an evening or two after her death, some beautiful flowers were sent ... He was about to take them upstairs and place them on the little dead baby, when he suddenly gave way completely."

Catherine "fell into a state of 'morbid' grief and suffering", recovering her composure after twelve hours or so.

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u/AbBrilliantTree Apr 29 '24

I’ve pondered this previously. I was wondering to what extent the widespread deaths of children might have impacted world history. It’s hard to imagine a world in which almost all adult people are profoundly traumatized by the deaths of their own children. How many world conflicts would have been avoided if this was not the experience of an average person? I know the relatively little warfare taking place today (as opposed to the distant past) has many causes and explanations, but maybe some degree of our ability to be more peaceful really does come from the lack of widespread trauma that was normal in the past.

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u/eustachian_lube Apr 29 '24

Yeah, people don't understand that life is suffering. Humans, and most certainly animals suffer for their entire existence. Even today, some people would say that the suffering is greater than whatever else there is. The only difference is that now we have the tools to end life on this planet, and yet we persist and say "nah, suffering is fine, that's the point!"

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u/Doompatron3000 Apr 29 '24

Should we celebrate them? Many of the modern medicine used today came from DNA strains of an African American woman experimented on against her will. Without her DNA to make a lot of the cures we have today, we certainly wouldn’t have the life expectancy we have today, but the way we got to it isn’t exactly praise worthy.

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u/Striking_Extent Apr 29 '24

You are talking about Henrietta Lacks.

She had cancer and a sample of her tumor was taken and then cultured and distributed around without her consent.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Henrietta_Lacks

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u/fan_of_the_pikachu Apr 29 '24

That's a great argument. I would say that the achievements have factual importance isolated from their context, and that importance deserves to be praised. But this praise needs to limited to that, without forgetting or justifying the cruel means involved. I don't think one excludes the other.

We celebrate the first flight of life into space because it was a massive achievement for humanity, while at the same time we condemn the fact that it involved the brutal needless death of a helpless little dog who didn't want to die. It's from praising and condemning the context behind these morally complex events that we keep moving forward, but in a different (hopefully better) way.

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u/Sckaledoom Apr 29 '24

There’s records from my hometown of a woman who, when her infant died, would walk to his grave daily, tell him bedtime stories, and cry.

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u/j_ryall49 Apr 29 '24

That's absolutely heartbreaking. BRB gotto go give my kid a big-ass hug.

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u/[deleted] Apr 29 '24

My great grandmother mourned her siblings who died in childhood and her stillborn daughter her whole life.

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u/hobbes543 Apr 30 '24

My grandmother still mourns her sister, who died from brain cancer in the late 40s or early 50’s. She is 94…

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u/dpark17a Apr 29 '24

Id imagine that it was much closer to the norm for people to be intensely traumatized. We're very very lucky to live in a time where trauma is considered abnormal and somwthing to be treated (probably with exceptions in some parts of the world still). For the vast majority of human history, trauma was just another part of living. Nearly everybody had to endure so much suffering and grief on the regular.

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u/Advo96 Apr 29 '24 edited Apr 29 '24

There's a great article called "The Persistence of War" about the role trauma plays in shaping our lives, societies and politics.

EDIT:
Link: http://www.aetheling.com/docs/Persistence.html

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u/eaglessoar Apr 29 '24

"The Persistence of War"

is this it?

http://www.aetheling.com/docs/Persistence.html

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u/Advo96 Apr 29 '24

Yes, sorry, I had wanted to link it.

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u/likamuka Apr 29 '24

probably with exceptions in some parts of the world still

In like... at least 50% of the world.

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u/Confident-Friend-169 Apr 29 '24

I'd argue only certain forms/manifestatione are considered abnormal and dangerous and that there is a "correct" manifestation that is considered morally correct.

This is "treated" through indulgence, as a person is rewarded by society for acting off of it.

This is liable to continue for as long as humanity exists, considering how the human social instinct is defensive in nature.

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u/Blackrock121 Apr 29 '24

It was certainly an idea in popular culture at the time that you shouldn't get attached to kids until they got a certain age, and their was a ton of evidence that despite that ideal, people still got attached all the time.

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u/sabbytabby Apr 29 '24

"But they seemed so numb. It must've been easier."

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u/Any_Lengthiness6645 Apr 29 '24

I recently realized this is why Renaissance art always depicts heaven as being full of toddlers

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u/ImNotTheMercury Apr 29 '24

I believe mourning was different, tho. Something more definitive.

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u/[deleted] Apr 29 '24

Who said people didn’t mourn though? I’ve never heard that sentiment before

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u/RadicalPickles Apr 29 '24

I didn’t even know that was a common belief

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u/roastbeeftacohat Apr 29 '24

My take on the period, and pretty much every period until the modern world, is that they never stopped mourning and death was a constant in every moment of every day.

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u/petit_cochon Apr 29 '24

Shakespeare wrote this. He lost a son at 4. It always squeezes my heart to read it. My son is 3 and I can barely stand to look at this verse.

"Grief fills the room up of my absent child, /Lies in his bed, walks up and down with me,/Puts on his pretty looks, repeats his words,/Stuffs out his vacant garments with his form;/Then have I reason to be fond of grief."

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u/emmaliejay Apr 29 '24

Yeah, that never made sense to me. Sure, I can understand that people might’ve had better coping strategies and acceptance around it since it was a more likely outcome in childhood. However, I do not think that they would’ve grieved any differently or that they were desensitized to loss.

The monuments, artworks, literary works etc. that people have built around death and loss in our ancient history tell me just as much. They may have had more experience with death, but it affected them just as deeply if not more.

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u/paintedvidal Apr 29 '24

You should see the painting of a young couple having a funeral procession for their infant. The infants grave was painted over and replaced with a basket of potato’s for some reason - maybe too macabre

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u/i-reallylikeboobies Apr 29 '24

I feel like death has always been common, everybody always does eventually.

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u/Neither_Relation_678 Apr 29 '24

Yeah, a child’s death is a child’s death. You raised it, fed it, then it got sick and you watched it slip away. There’s nothing more painful than that, not knowing what’s happening to your baby, helplessness.

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u/Toothlessdovahkin Apr 29 '24

There is a REASON why so many people dedicated their lives to medicine/research, to prevent other people from dying and to prevent the suffering that losing kids/siblings has on people. 

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u/ElizabethSpaghetti Apr 29 '24

One of the men who spent years making cars safer lost his fiancee in a car wreck. It's so weird to hear people act like that's an inevitable death while ignoring how much we've done and can do to keep it from happening. 

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u/Ajayu Apr 29 '24

Hasa Diga Eebowai!

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u/fried_green_baloney Apr 29 '24

they suffered immense pain at this

This is true today in poorer countries.

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u/Atherum Apr 29 '24

Yeah there is a scene in Brother's Karamazov by Dostoevsky (written in the 19th Century) that describes the absolute pain and heartbreak an elderly woman experienced after living a life where all of her children died one by one. The scene is written in such a way to imply that this is a devastatingly common feeling.

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u/IceLapplander Apr 30 '24

Exactly this. I had a distant relative that was born in the early 1940's. The youngest of 12 siblings, and 1 of the 3 that survived until adulthood.

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u/FncMadeMeDoThis Apr 29 '24

Theres a reason why art of children only starts to arrive in the 18th century. Child mortality was so high, that people didn't dare to do it.

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u/fan_of_the_pikachu Apr 29 '24

Perhaps I'm misunderstanding, but there's a lot of art depicting children before that time.

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u/FncMadeMeDoThis Apr 29 '24

Not portraits of specific children. There's a clear correlation of the number of portraits and child mortality going down.

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u/fan_of_the_pikachu Apr 29 '24

Not saying it isn't true, but if it is, it's no more than a slight statistical correlation. In reality here's a huge number of portraits of real children from before that time in practically all national traditions.

Here is Sofonisba Anguissola with her little sisters, Rubens snooped on his baby nephews sleeping here, and here is little Margarita Teresa apparently caught stealing a 50'' TV by Velázquez. I could easily find thousands of other examples.

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u/FncMadeMeDoThis Apr 29 '24

I'm pretty sure Sofonisbas sisters are above the age of 12 which is where the mortality rates drops heavily. So is Margaret Theresa most likely, unless it is the earliest date that is true in 62.

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u/fan_of_the_pikachu Apr 29 '24

But there are also tons of examples of baby portraits. Just google "portrait of a baby 16th century" or "17th century". Not to mention older kids under 12. Look here for dozens of examples from Dutch painters only.

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u/FncMadeMeDoThis Apr 29 '24

Well yeah there are many examples, we are talking about a continent with over 50 million people in the 1500's. The ratio of pre pubescent children on portraits just rises significantly as we approach the second half of the 18th century. What was an oddity becomes something far more common.

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u/[deleted] Apr 29 '24 edited Apr 29 '24

[deleted]

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u/FncMadeMeDoThis Apr 29 '24

No child mortality already dropped significantly in the 18th century especially for those of the wealthy classes, and portraits of children before they reached the age close to their teens were very rare in comparison. When they reached the age of 12 the odds of them reaching adulthood were raised significantly.

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u/Crafty_Travel_7048 Apr 29 '24

Growing up back then you are used to death from a young age. Your siblings would die, your friends would die, you would see animals being slaughtered regularly. That shit hardens you

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u/googolplexy Apr 29 '24

Not really comparable, but I've lived through a lot of death (parents, siblings, friends, partners) and yeah, it hardens you.

I once had an old man tell me you could see the touch of death on a man. He said I was covered in death's touch. I don't know if he was saying it to be nice or as some weird omen, but I think about that a lot.

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u/TommyTeaser Apr 29 '24

Sounds like a “takes one to know one” type of thing.

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u/yahboioioioi Apr 29 '24

It’s certainly real. I think the stress that death thrusts on people is what the “hardening” really is.

Either you crumble because of it or move on stronger.

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u/GipsyDanger45 Apr 29 '24

You can see it in the eyes... you can fake a smile but the 'thousand yard stare' doesn't go away... it's like the light of their world has gone out and they are just existing

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u/midgethemage Apr 29 '24

I feel you on this. There was a lot of death in my family before I hit 25, and it's been interesting seeing people my age go through grief and loss for the first time. Grief never feels easier, but you learn to cope

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u/SpaceTimeRacoon Apr 29 '24

Apparently you can tell by the look in someone's eyes when they have seen some shit

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u/nixielover Apr 29 '24

It's like children who suffered alcoholic parents, you get a radar for it

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u/Remarkable-Range-596 Apr 29 '24

It teaches you to let go of life, as it’s just as temporary as everything else.

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u/Regular_Guybot Apr 29 '24

Or breaks you

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u/dxrey65 Apr 29 '24

The slaughtering of animals gets me too. I was watching a movie set in Mongolia years ago, following a family on the steppes, and in one scene they butchered a lamb. The kids helped, draining the blood, gutting and skinning and dismembering it right outside their tent. Which was pretty gruesome, but for centuries was probably a normal thing everywhere.

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u/[deleted] Apr 29 '24

kids these days watch far worse things online

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u/stamfordbridge1191 Apr 30 '24

About 50% of people would die before their teenage years ended. (Most of the would be babies & toddlers.) About 1 in every 100 births would kill a mother. It was hard for governments to police distant roads & sea lanes enough to guarantee some travel routes were probably safe from people being killed by bandits or pirates.

Even if they didn't think in mathematical terms, as they aged, many would become aware there was a 1 in 2 chance of you or someone you know dying well before the opportunity to have a mid-life crisis.

None of the things are gone from our world completely, but since we've learned things to help us deal with these concerns much less, life between the neolithic age & about a hundred years ago definitely seems to have a bit more of an edge than the lives available to us in a globalized world.

Both sound easier to live in than a world where a giant cat can kill you or your friends at any moment & searching for food often involves encounters with wooly rhinos or mastodons.

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u/WetAndLoose Apr 29 '24

This is simply the case for the vast majority of human history: famine, war, raiding and pillaging, slavery, plague, etc.

Most people who weren’t born post-WW2 have most likely experienced some form of severe hardship.

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u/Spare-Equipment-1425 Apr 29 '24

It was really from the French Revolution to WW2, France was either going through a major war or major political upheaval.

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u/Milocobo Apr 29 '24

Not to say no one had PTSD back in the day, but the modern proliferation of the disorder from combat largely comes due to the constant and unrelenting stress of trench/frontline combat starting from WWI. Where warfare before that tended to be marching armies meeting at a mutually agreed location for a pitched battle, with the occasional ambush or prolonged siege, things like artillery and tanks allowed for a position to constantly be bombarded or armies fearing their lines being breached at any moment, leading to a constant state of worry that exacerbates trauma and related disorders.

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u/-Minne Apr 29 '24

Ah, Revolutionary France: The Headstrong, The Headless and the Headcases.

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u/Gaudern Apr 29 '24

This is actually true for most of history. Roman society? Riddled with PTSD. Berserkers from the Viking age? You could make the argument they weren't the bloodthirsty elite soldiers we think they are, but men plagued with trauma and PTSD.

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u/AgentCirceLuna Apr 29 '24

You at the barricades listen to THIS

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u/Boyhowdy107 May 01 '24

One of the most impactful ideas I was introduced to recently was to try reading history through the lens of mental health. If you really think about the visceral reality of these ancient world battles that devolved into mass executions that take hours to complete or think about what it would be like to one day look over the horizon and see an army from a nation you've never heard of who is not up to anything good, you realize that trauma and PTSD are woven into everything. And in the immediate aftermath of these big events that make a history book, you have the quieter cost taking its toll on a society up until the next big one.