Following the Civil War, Zac Trimbell knows he is no longer the same man as when he left. Fighting the internal demons brought on from his experiences in the violent and inhuman conditions of war he soon learns that he suffers from PTSD.
…
Which is impressive, as the diagnosis term “post-traumatic stress disorder” wasn’t used until 1978.
Exactly! I looked it up:
PTSD was not officially recognized until the 1980s, but early reports of what some were already calling more colloquially, “Soldier’s Heart” began in the late spring and summer of 1862 as a result of the brutal fighting in the Peninsula Campaign. A few months later a doctor in Philadelphia, Dr. Jacob Mendes Da Costa gave it an official name; “Irritable Heart”1. During the Civil War, doctors called PTSD-like conditions “nostalgia,” a centuries-old term for despair and homesickness so severe that soldiers became listless and emaciated and sometimes died2.
Research is your friend.
Honestly, that actually sounds much cooler: “He realizes that he’s suffering from the condition his fellow veterans call ‘Soldier’s Heart.'”
I would have even accepted “shell shock.”