One of the most dangerous and misleading terms in our language is the word “neuropathic;” for it is made to signify so many things that it ends by meaning nothing. Etymologically, it should mean “afflicted with disease of the nerves,” a conception the precision of which we shall discuss below. Yet on the return from the front of patients afflicted with “shock” one heard the opinion at first that the cases were those of “neuropathic” men: that the soldiers who became affected by shock were weaklings or were descended from mentally afflicted or nervous parents. It is, of course, unquestionable that in a large army there must be many soldiers with tainted family histories; and it is probably equally certain that such factors play some part in determining the greater susceptibility of certain men to shock. But it would be a gross misrepresentation of the facts to label all the soldiers who suffer from mental troubles as weaklings. The strongest man when exposed to sufficiently intense and frequent stimuli may become subject to mental derangement. It is quite common to find among the patients suffering from shock senior non-commissioned officers who have been in the army fifteen or twenty years (much of which time has been spent in foreign service under trying circumstances, such, for example, as the South African War), and have stood this severe strain. Such men can hardly be called weaklings or “neuropathic.” Even in those cases where there is a definite history of a neurotic parent, it would be a mistake hastily to conclude that when the son of such a man or woman becomes a victim of shell-shock it is due to heredity. For when the detailed history of such patients is obtained the fact comes out quite clearly that the social disturbances in the household of such a nervous person may be amply sufficient to inflict severe psychical injuries upon young children. Further, in many cases the histories themselves clearly and definitely reveal the real etiology of the mental condition, and point to emotional disturbances in children, due to the cruelty of drunken parents, a rankling sense of injustice, a terrifying experience, which may have been an accident or deliberate maltreatment by some human being, or again, to the appalling conditions created in some of these homes by nervous and irritable parents, as the real trauma which the “shock” has served to re-awaken.