Railway spine was a nineteenth-century diagnosis for the post-traumatic symptoms of passengers involved in railroad accidents. The first full length medical study of the condition was

John Eric Erichsen Sir John Eric Erichsen, 1st Baronet (19 July 1818 – 23 September 1896) was a Danish-born British surgeon. Early life Erichsen was born in Copenhagen, the son of Eric Erichsen, a member of a well-known Danish banking family. He attended Mans ...

's classic book, ''On Railway and Other Injuries of the Nervous System''. For this reason, railway spine is often known as Erichsen's disease. Railway collisions were a frequent occurrence in the early 19th century. Exacerbating the problem was the fact that railway cars were flimsy, wooden structures with no protection for the occupants. Soon a group of people started coming forward who claimed that they had been injured in train crashes, but had no obvious evidence of injury. The railroads rejected these claims as fake. The nature of symptoms caused by "railway spine" was hotly debated in the late 19th century, notably at the meetings of the (Austrian) Imperial Society of Physicians in Vienna, 1886. Germany's leading neurologist,

Hermann Oppenheim Hermann Oppenheim (1 January 1858 – 5 May 1919) was one of the leading neurologists in Germany. Life and work Oppenheim is the son of Juda Oppenheim (1824–1891), the long-time rabbi of the Warburg synagogue community , and his wife, Cäcil ...

, claimed that all railway spine symptoms were due to physical damage to the spine or brain, whereas French and British scholars, notably Jean-Martin Charcot and Herbert Page, insisted that some symptoms could be caused by hysteria (now known as

conversion disorder Conversion disorder (CD), or functional neurologic symptom disorder, is a diagnostic category used in some psychiatric classification systems. It is sometimes applied to patients who present with neurological symptoms, such as numbness, blindnes ...

). Erichsen observed that those most likely to be injured in a railway crash were those sitting with their backs to the acceleration. This is the same injury mechanism found in

whiplash Whiplash may refer to: * The long flexible part of a whip * Whiplash (medicine), a neck injury ** Whiplash Injury Protection System (WHIPS), in automobiles Film and television * ''Whiplash'' (1948 film), a US film noir about a boxer * ''Whiplas ...

. As with automobile accidents, railway and airplane accidents are now known to cause

posttraumatic stress disorder Post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) is a mental and behavioral disorder that can develop because of exposure to a traumatic event, such as sexual assault, warfare, traffic collisions, child abuse, domestic violence, or other threats ...

(PTSD) and other psychosomatic symptoms in addition to physical trauma.

Notes

Injuries Traumatology Anxiety disorders Obsolete terms for mental disorders Railway accidents and incidents {{disorder-stub

See also

Notes