The film addresses emerging understandings of shell shock and recommends treatment methods that are akin to the treatment of "hysteria." Writing in both medical literature (The Lancet) and psychiatric literature, Hurst attempts to understand the struggles that soldiers returning from World War I are still experiencing. He uses the recordings for the film to study and review patients' mannerisms, and claims he can permanently cure the soldiers after one treatment of "explanation, persuasion, and re-education." Other physicians are skeptical of his work, and by 1918, most military physicians will treat "war neurosis" as a chronic condition, recommending that affected soldiers not return to the battlefield because they often '"relapse." Hurst's work will influence a new generation of neurologists and his treatment methods will be applied well into World World II, despite never being able to demonstrate long-term results.