Hunting the Royal Navy’s Medical ‘Snark’: Diagnosis, Prevention and Treatment of Tropical Neurosis in British Sailors, 1943-45

Houghton, Frances (2024). Hunting the Royal Navy’s Medical ‘Snark’: Diagnosis, Prevention and Treatment of Tropical Neurosis in British Sailors, 1943-45. Social History of Medicine (Early access).

DOI: https://doi.org/10.1093/shm/hkae037

Abstract

Between 1943-45, Britain’s Royal Naval Medical Service dispatched urgent missions to investigate physiological and psychological effects suffered by British sailors deployed in tropical climates. This article draws on the resulting, previously neglected, medical articles and medical research reports to examine understandings of ‘tropical neurosis’ in the wartime Fleet. Exploring how tropical neurosis was encountered, framed and explained by senior naval medical professionals, this article investigates the condition’s portrayal as a serious health and military risk during the Second World War. This research analyses hitherto unexplored intersections of constructions of race, gender and environment in British naval medical conclusions and recommendations, delivering significant new understandings of the insidious operation of medical racism in Britain’s wartime armed forces. It also establishes, for the first time, how this ambiguous illness was construed as a threat to Britain’s naval war effort, and even the very future of Empire, by the Navy’s medical branch.