Shell-shock and other neuropsychiatric problems : $b Presented in five hundred and eighty-nine case histories from the war literature, 1914-1918Southard, Elmer Ernest
History
Shell-shock and other neuropsychiatric problems : $b Presented in five hundred and eighty-nine case histories from the war literature, 1914-1918
Southard, Elmer Ernest
War neuroses; World War, 1914-1918 -- Medical care; World War, 1914-1918 -- Psychological aspects
It is held that the paralysis in the reflex cases is more limited, more
persistent, and assumes special forms not observable in hysteria. The
attitudes in hysterical palsies conform more to the natural positions
of the limbs than do those observed in reflex paralysis. Probably the
presence of marked amyotrophies in the reflex nervous disorders is the
most convincing factor in separating these from pithiatic affections.
These atrophies correspond to the arthritic muscular atrophies of
Vulpian, Charcot, Gowers, and others, and cannot for a moment be
regarded as caused by suggestion or as removable by counter-suggestion
or persuasion. They are influenced, discounting the effect of time
and natural recuperation, only by methods of treatment designed to
improve the peripheral and central nutrition of the patient. Pithiatic
atrophies are slight and probably always to be accounted for by
disuse or the association of some peripheral neural disorder with the
hysteria. Affections of the sudatory and pilatory systems are more
definitely pronounced in reflex cases than in those of a strictly
hysterical character.
Some of the facts brought forward by Babinski and Froment to
demonstrate the differentiation of reflex paralyses from pithiatic
disorders of motion are challenged in the records of this volume by
others, as for instance, by Dejerine, Roussy, Marie, and Guillain.
Babinski tells us that in pithiatism, properly so designated, the
tendon reflexes are not affected. He believes that even in pronounced
anesthesia of the lower extremities the plantar reflexes can always
be elicited and are not abnormal in exhibition. Dejerine, however,
produces cases to illustrate the fact that in marked hysterical
anesthesia of the feet plantar responses cannot be produced. I have
personally studied cases which lend some strength to either contention.
In some of these I was not able to conclude that either the use of the
will or the presence of contractions in extension was sufficient to
exclude the normal responses.
Differences in muscle tonicity, in mechanical irritability of the
muscles, and the presence or absence of fibrotendinous contractions are
indications of a separation between the reflex and purely functional
cases, as apparently demonstrated in some of the case records. True
trophic disorders of the skin, hair, and bones observed in the reflex
cases are also said to have no place in the illustrations of pithiatism.
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