Leo van Bergen

In the 1960s, it became clear that survivors of the concentration camps had developed psychological complaints. They were diagnosed with KZ-syndrome. Dutch psychiatrist Jan Bastiaans used LSD in his psychotherapeutic sessions with KZ-syndrome sufferers, who said they greatly benefitted from his treatment. This was, despite criticism from medical professionals, enough proof for journalists, regardless of their signature, to defend the drug’s usage. Without the newspapers, LSD probably would have disappeared quickly as a medical tool. Over time, paradoxically, the cause-related diagnosis KZ-syndrome came to encompass more than just Holocaust survivors: soldiers, hostages, survivors of the Japanese camps, and the children of Dutch national socialists were all eventually included within the concept. It resulted in an enormous rise in patient numbers, and a blurring and eventual disappearance of the concept. This book explores the contribution of Dutch newspapers to the historical-cultural phenomenon of this rising focus on victims and victimhood, without which the later acceptance of PTSD – a symptom-related diagnosis – could not be understood.

From KZ-syndrome to PTSD

Dutch Newspapers on War Victims and Their LSD-treatment by Jan Bastiaans

This study examines the Dutch East Indies Red Cross. The author analyzes concepts of neutrality and humanitarianism in a colonial context, the organization's political and military roles, how it functioned as an instrument of colonization, and its role during wartime and decolonization in the Dutch East Indies.

On Humanitarianism and Colonialism

The Dutch East Indies Red Cross, 1870–1950

lijden en sterven in een grote oorlog

Zacht en eervol

The story of leprosy in the Dutch East Indies from the beginning of the 19th century to the middle of the 20th reveals important themes in the colonial enterprise across the territory that is today’s Indonesia. Operating in a territory with only a few hundred Western-trained doctors and a population in the tens of millions, Dutch colonial officials approached leprosy with uncertainty and anxiety. In the early 19th century, the Dutch administration simply removed sufferers from public view: campaigns targetted anyone “looking ugly”. Towards the end of the century, colonial science considered leprosy a hereditary disease of tropical subjects, and therefore undeserving of the colonial government’s limited resources. The leprosariums were emptied. At the start of the 20th century, a growing understanding that leprosy was spread by a bacillus caused a panic that leprosy might spread from the tropics to the colonial metropole. The mixed emotions of pity, fear and revulsion associated with management of the disease intensified, and fed into broader debates on colonial policy. The experts were unsure, and resources were never forthcoming, and despite a view that “bacteria are the same everywhere”, Dutch leprosy treatment in the East Indies mobilized traditional healing practices and relied on home care. Leo van Bergen’s detailed, attentive study to changing policies for treatment and prevention of leprosy (now often called Hansen’s disease) is fascinating medical history, and provides a useful lens for understanding colonialism in Indonesia.

Dealing with Leprosy in the Dutch East Indies, 1816–1942

Uncertainty, Anxiety, Frugality

Despite the numerous vicious conflicts that scarred the twentieth century, the horrors of the Western Front continue to exercise a particularly strong hold on the modern imagination. The unprecedented scale and mechanization of the war changed forever the way suffering and dying were perceived and challenged notions of what the nations could reasonably expect of their military. Examining experiences of the Western Front, this book looks at the life of a soldier from the moment he marched into battle until he was buried. In five chapters - Battle, Body, Mind, Aid, Death - it describes and analyzes the physical and mental hardship of the men who fought on a front that stretched from the Belgian coast to the Swiss border. Beginning with a broad description of the war it then analyzes the medical aid the Tommies, Bonhommes and Frontschweine received - or all too often did not receive - revealing how this aid was often given for military and political rather than humanitarian reasons (getting the men back to the front or munitions factory and trying to spare the state as many war-pensions as possible). It concludes with a chapter on the many ways death presented itself on or around the battlefield, and sets out in detail the problems that arise when more people are killed than can possibly be buried properly. In contrast to most books in the field this study does not focus on one single issue - such as venereal disease, plastic surgery, shell-shock or the military medical service - but takes a broad view on wounds and illnesses across both sides of the conflict. Drawing on British, French, German, Belgian and Dutch sources it shows the consequences of modern warfare on the human individuals caught up in it, and the way it influences our thinking on 'humanitarian' activities.

Suffering, Dying and Military Medicine on the Western Front, 1914–1918

Before My Helpless Sight

Eric Vermetten

The First World War and Health: Rethinking Resilience aims to broaden the scope of resilience by looking at it from military, medical, personal and societal perspectives. The authors ask how war influenced the health - both physically and psychologically - of those fighting and attending the wounded, as well as the general health of the community of which they were part.

Leo van Bergen

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