Frances Williams looks at the historic concept of ‘Blitz Spirit’ and its evocation during this period of pandemic

Themes of resilience and strength have been drawn from the Second World War and put to use in the current pandemic – including the psychological defence, ‘Blitz spirit’. Yet a risk is run when nostalgia distracts us from important differences between the past and present. They can further skew historical accuracy, too.

Health Secretary Matt Hancock stated in early 2020: ‘Our generation has never been tested like this … Our grandparents were, during the Second World War, when our cities were bombed during the Blitz. Despite the pounding every night, the rationing, the loss of life, they pulled together in one gigantic national effort.’

Working directly with the older generation, palliative care doctor, Rachel Clarke (@doctor_oxford) said they certainly seemed to have taken the ‘Blitz spirit’ to heart, thinking themselves stoic and resilient. Dangerously – and sometimes tragically so – some of over 70s weren’t washing their hands or taking lockdown measures seriously enough, even though the pandemic deaths were mostly among their own age group.

(Photo: Aldwich Tube station 1940, Imperial War Museum)

Historical dispute

The ‘Blitz spirit’ has always been a disputed phenomenon, reflecting contested post-war histories of ‘morale’. Certainly, in the lead-up to war, the government was worried about the likelihood of ‘bomb neurosis’, a form of shell shock that civilian populations might suffer if subjected to prolonged bombing.

A new era of ‘total war’ fed a perception of the vulnerability of citizens to ‘knock out’ blows from the air, that might lead to febrile mental states. A network of specialist hospitals – called ‘neurosis clinics’ – was set up outside UK cities, but ultimately little used.

In his 2012 work, War on Fear: Solly Zuckerman and civilian nerve in the Second World War, Ian Burley cites a visiting commentator from the US who observed the British public’s capacity for ‘pluck’ and such outsider reflections were fed back to the public in the form of propaganda. A prominent psychologist of the day advocated biscuits and nips of whiskey to allay ‘nerves’ during bombing raids, reported by Edward Glover in 1940 in The Psychology of Fear and Courage.

Covid-19 spirit?

In her new book, Blitz Spirit: Voices of Britain Living Through Crisis, Rebecca Brown re-visits the ‘alleged phenomenon’ of the Blitz spirit, delving into diaries from The Mass Observation Archive, daily diaries kept by hundreds of people during the war. These cast fresh insight into our current pandemic, she proposes, because they show the nuance and diversity of everyday feeling.

Many popular descriptions of our of states of mind in lockdown now are anecdotal: a ‘corona coaster’ of high and low moods, sleeplessness and vivid ‘pandemic dreams’.  Speculations centre on how we might arrive at the right level of panic – especially given we get much of our information from internet sources of variable reliability.

Professor Nikolas Rose in Mental Health and Social Change in the Time of Covid-19 points out that the pandemic and the measures taken in response, such as severe restrictions to physical interactions and our daily routines, are discrete and separate. Added to this are widespread uncertainty and distress about the virus, loved ones, education, work and money. Increased anxiety and fear are normal in the circumstances. ‘We need be wary of rushing to frame them in terms of mental health,’ he warns.

As the NHS staff operate on ‘the front line’ of our current battle, it may be that they bear the longer term psychological cost – including diagnoses of PTSD – than the wider ‘civilian’ population on the ‘Home Front’. For now, these are speculations.

In the interim, it is important to consider the ways in which the pandemic is not like a war, and the risk that ‘nostalgic framings’ might distract us from our own mistakes, as says Martha Lincoln in her blog On Memory’s Battlefield: The Pandemic as Our Next Forgotten War (2021).

Frances Williams completed her PhD in arts, health and devolution in 2019 and is currently Visiting Researcher at Glyndwr University.

Further reading

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For me, any mention of anatomy conjures up memories of the hours spent during medical school in the Dissection Room, overpowered by the smell of formaldehyde, trying in vain to orientate myself with more than a little help from Gray’s Anatomy for Students. I remember being constantly told that whole-body dissection was a privilege, and not something that was offered by all medical schools. But sometimes I wondered, when did anatomy become such a fundamental component of a medical education, and why?

The answer I feel, lies with a certain character from the sixteenth century: Andreas Vesalius (1514-1564).

Born in Brussels in the early sixteenth century, Vesalius was the son of the apothecary to the Holy Roman Emperor. He became influenced by medicine at an early age and chose to pursue a career as a physician. Vesalius is renowned both for his skill as an anatomist and for his crucial role in elevating the status of the discipline of anatomy: he, more than any other individual, established it as an elementary component of a medical education.

Investigation into the field of anatomy before Vesalius was limited. There had been plenty of animal dissection: Aristotle’s extensive work on the classification of living things from the fourth century B.C. is probably the best example here. However, evidence of human dissection before the sixteenth century is sparse. There was a brief period in the third century B.C. when Herophilus of Chalcedon and Erasistratsus of Cos had carried out human dissections but enthusiasm for this practice was short-lived and it was soon prohibited due to the pressure of public opinion – Egyptians believed in the need of an intact body for the afterlife.

It was not until the twelfth century that there was a revival in interest in the field of human anatomy. At this time, ancient Greek physician and philosopher Claudius Galen was still regarded as the reference point in terms of human anatomy. However, Galen did many of his studies on animals and consequently some of his observations relating to the ‘human’ body were in fact false. Despite this, Galen’s writings had been accepted as scripture and had not been questioned… until Vesalius came along.

Vesalius’ greatest achievement in my mind was his book, De humani corporis Fabrica (‘On the Fabric of the Human Body’): the first complete account of human anatomy. This work was impressive in its content – it corrected many of Galen’s previous mistakes and errors – but more importantly, in what it represented in the wider field of medicine and medical education.

The Fabrica took Vesalius four years to complete but he was an absolute perfectionist. Extensive correspondence between Vesalius and his publisher demonstrates how he stipulated exactly how the Fabrica was to be set out, which drawings were to be included and how the various parts of the anatomy should be labelled. The Fabrica is beautifully illustrated and enormously detailed: a salute to Vesalius’ meticulous care and attention.

The Fabrica generated an anatomical revolution. Anatomy used to be stigmatised as the poor relation of surgery, but the Fabrica helped assert it as an integral component of medicine. Finally, anatomy was being recognised as a great skill, and the humble anatomist was being duly applauded.

Something that Vesalius emphasised in the Fabrica is the importance of observation and ‘seeing for oneself’. He was adamant that medical students learnt best by picking up a scalpel themselves rather than just reading a book or learning by rote. Vesalius himself refused to have a ‘cutter’ – an assistant who would perform the dissection for him. Instead, Vesalius did the dissection himself, surrounded by mesmerised students, and lectured as he went. This is wonderfully illustrated on the frontispiece of the Fabrica: on the left hand side of the exposed cadaver is Vesalius, pointing out the various abdominal contents, getting his hands dirty! Students surround Vesalius, clamouring to get to the front, eager to see the great anatomist at work.

Image 1: Frontispiece, Vesalius, De Humani corporis fabrica libri septem. Credit: Wellcome Collection. CC BY

Ultimately, by the end of the sixteenth century, Vesalius had surpassed Galen as the primary anatomical authority. He is thought of as one of the great innovators of anatomy, not because he discovered anything radically new, but because he altered the way in which the medical community thought about and practised anatomy. Vesalius’ work inspired and influenced budding anatomists and there were rapid advances in practical anatomy after his death. Realdo Columbo’s work on the heartbeat and pulmonary transit is one such example, and this proved vital in William Harvey’s later work on the circulation of blood.

So, to all those medical students out there, when you are next in the DR at the end of a long morning, more concerned about your mounting hunger than the insertion point of iliopsoas, take a moment to remember Vesalius: the greatest anatomist that ever was.

Lucy Havard

Further Reading

• ‘Andreas Vesalius’, Science Museum (online). Available at: http://broughttolife.sciencemuseum.org.uk/broughttolife/people/andreasvesalius
• ‘Vesalius’ Renaissance anatomy lessons’, British Library (online). Available at: https://www.bl.uk/learning/cult/bodies/vesalius/renaissance.html
• Vivian Nutton, Ancient Medicine. Routledge: London, 2012.

It is just over 50 years since the 1967 Abortion Act was passed. It therefore seems fitting to examine the history of abortion and consider how this practice has changed over time, from antiquity to the twentieth century. This blog uses evidence from ancient treatises and excerpts from a collection of personal accounts from the mid-twentieth century published by Marie Stopes International (see further reading). It argues that despite the transcendence of two millennia, there was little change in abortion practices as a result of the secretive and stigmatised nature of the act.

Physical exertion

Physical exertion was a traditional method used to try and induce an abortion. Although only successful in the most extreme of cases, it was a commonly held belief in antiquity that prevailed until the mid-twentieth century. The ancient Hippocratic Corpus describes the ‘Lacedaemonian Leap’ which involved jumping up and down, touching one’s buttocks with the heels at each leap, to try and induce a miscarriage.

This belief in the abortive properties of physical exertion is also evident in personal accounts from the mid-twentieth century. ‘Alice’ fell pregnant at just 16 in 1963. She describes how ashamed her parents were when they found out, and how her father physically abused her to try and achieve this aim: ‘We lived in a house in Clifton, which had very steep stairs. My dad was there and he literally punched me in the stomach and then pushed me down the stairs’.

Oral methods

A wide variety of oral abortifacients were employed in antiquity. These ranged from a concoction of common herbs and plants that could be grown in one’s own garden, to exotic substances more difficult to obtain. The popularity of purging oral substances, both diuretics and laxatives, for the purposes of abortion is evident in Soranus’ Gynaecology.

Returning to the case of sixteen-year-old ‘Alice’, she describes how she came home from school one day ‘to find this strange concoction brewing in the kitchen. It was a natural laxative my mother said. They thought it would bring on a miscarriage’. On another occasion, Alice reports that her father ‘produced some little black pills and told me to take them’.

An abortion method combining both physical and oral elements is found in the commonly held belief in the efficacy of hot baths and alcohol. This is particularly advocated by Soranus in the ancient period, who advises ‘lingering in the baths and drinking first a little wine and living on pungent food’ in order to induce an abortion.

Such methods are also evident in the mid-twentieth century. When ‘Isa’ was denied a recommendation for a termination in 1962, she describes ‘getting blind drunk on gin and taking hot baths and God knows what else’.

Douching methods

Douching was a popular abortion method in the mid-twentieth century. ‘Jane’ recounts her two experiences of backstreet abortion in the 1950s: ‘Both were done in the same way, by different backstreet abortionists, using a douche, Lux and Dettol’.

Interestingly, there is in fact evidence for the use of douching devices in antiquity, especially in Hippocratic times. However, douching tended to be used to promote conception, rather than to prevent or terminate a pregnancy. For example, Hippocrates’ Diseases of Women advises a solution of ‘mare’s milk’ to be injected into the womb using a douching device to help treat an ulcerated uterus that is preventing successful conception.

Surgical methods

Surgical methods were recognised as the most dangerous means of abortion in antiquity, and were only resorted to in the most desperate circumstances, typically when the fetus was fairly well-developed and other methods had failed. Celsus, writing in the first century AD, described the technique of surgical removal as ‘reckoned amongst the most difficult: for it both requires the highest prudence and tenderness, and is attended with the greatest danger’.

However, there is clear evidence to suggest that these procedures did occur. Celsus is particularly detailed in his medical account of the surgical removal of an already dead fetus that had not been intentionally aborted:

…if the head is nearest, a hook should be introduced, in every part smooth, with a short point, which is properly fixed either in the eye, or the ear, or the mouth sometimes even in the forehead; and then begin drawn outwards, brings away the child.

There is an argument that such instruments were only used in cases where the fetus had already expired and not as a means of procuring abortion. However, references to the instrument known as embruosphaktes (literally: ‘embryo-slayer’), suggests otherwise.

There is similar evidence for instrumental methods used in the mid-twentieth century. Again, it is generally accepted that such intervention would be resorted to only when other less invasive methods had failed. Given the potential for physical harm this is hardly surprising. ‘June’ shares her memories of backstreet abortion in 1959: ‘I knew that women had been damaged severely from abortions going wrong. Knitting needles. We’d all heard stories about knitting needles and coat hangers’.

The ‘crochet hook’ was another popular instrument used in attempted abortion, easily obtainable and a common household item like the knitting needle and the coat hanger. The similarities between the description of the hook-like instrument from antiquity and the mid-twentieth century crochet hook depicted below are striking:

Image 1: Crochet hook – a hooked instrument for removing an aborted fetus. Wellcome Images.

This blog has drawn attention to the significant parallels existing between abortion practices of antiquity and those of the mid-twentieth century, prior to the introduction of the 1967 Abortion Act. I suggest that it was the stigmatised culture of abortion that led to this stagnation in abortion practices.

Further reading

• Soo Brookstone (Ed), Voices for Choice(London: Marie Stopes International, 1997).
• Aulus Cornelius Celsus, Cornelius Celsus of medicine. In eight books. Translated by James Greive, (London, 1756).
• Hippocrates, Hippocratic Writings, edited by G.E.R. Lloyd, (London: Penguin Books, 1983).
• Soranus, Gynaecology, translated with an introduction by Owsei Temkin, (Baltimore: John Hopkins University Press, 1991).
• Konstantinos Kapparis, Abortion in the Ancient World, (London: Duckworth Publishers, 2002)
• John Riddle, Contraception and abortion from the ancient world to the Renaissance, (United States of America: Harvard University Press, 1992).

Lucy Havard