`titrebPrehistory of psychotraumatology. The first models of trauma (1862-1884)`/titrebDuring the 19th century, the first railway accidents give rise to social and legal questions which are at the birth of the notion of trauma in psychiatry. The notion borrows its name and initial theories from surgery, the only medical discipline able to give explanation to mysterious symptoms presented by certain survivors of these accidents. The hypothesis of peripheral concussions diffusing to other parts of body and causing lesions to the spine and the brain are at the origin of new pathology called Railway spine and later Railway brain. This is these distant anthropological and epistemological origins of modern psycho-traumatology that we will relate in this article which should shed light on many contemporary debates regarding psychic trauma.