EXCERPT By the second decade of the twentieth century, a consensus was emerging around the effect of loud sound on the psyche, one which went far beyond the confines of the psychological clinic. Evidence from the battlefields of Europe and military experiments in North America revealed the extensive nature of the damage to the bodies and minds of soldiers exposed to the unprecedented intensity of artillery fire. Suspicions regarding the widespread effects of extremely loud sound, which first arose in the Great War, were becoming empirically validated just after the First World War…