An important group of cases is that of the stupors occurring during warfare. Considering stupor as a withdrawal reaction, it is surprising there were so few of them, although partial stupor reactions as functional perpetuation of concussion were very common. The editor saw several typical cases in young children in London who passed into long “sleeps” apparently as a result of the air raids. Myers[26] has given us the best account of stupors in actual warfare. A typical case was that of a man who was found in a dazed condition and difficult to arouse. He could give little information about himself, could neither read nor write and never spoke voluntarily. A week later his speech was still limited and labored and no account of recent events could be obtained from him. Under hypnosis he was induced to talk of the accident which had precipitated this disorder. He became excited in telling his story, evidently visualizing many of the events. In several successive séances, more data were obtained and a cure effected. Myers points out that in all his cases there was a mental condition which varied from slight depression to actual stupor, all had amnesias of variable extent and all had headaches. The mental content seemed to be confined to thoughts of bombardment, with a tendency for the mind always to wander to this topic. The author thinks that pain is a guardian protecting the patient from too distressing thoughts. An effort to speak would cause pain in the throat of a case of mutism and, sometimes, when a distressing memory was sought after under hypnosis, physical pain would wake the sleeper. His view is that pains tend to preserve the mutism and amnesia, so that there are “inhibitory processes” causing the stupor, which prevent the patient from further suffering. He does not find either in theory or experience reason to believe that these conditions are the result of either suggestion or “fixed ideas.” He thinks it natural that the last symptom of the stupor to disappear should be mutism, as speech and vision are the prime factors in communicating with environment. [As has been noted frequently in this book, mutism is a common residual symptom of the benign stupor.] Myers believes that in nearly every instance mutism follows stupor and is merely an attenuation of the latter process. When deafness is associated with mutism, he thinks it is often due merely to the inattention of the stuporous state. In this connection we should mention that Gucci[27] points out that stupor patients with mutism of long duration may, when requested, read fluently and then relapse again into complete unreactiveness towards auditory impressions. This, we would say, is probably an example of a more or less automatic intellectual operation occurring when the patient is sufficiently stimulated, although he cannot be raised to the point of spontaneous verbal productivity.