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
Loewy observed him during this affair and noticed that he did not
by language or movement suggest intoxication or hilarity but merely
a certain excitement. He was entirely oriented for time, place and
person, and his outward behavior was correct enough except for his
military rank.
Sent to his quarters near by, he gave the impression to his immediate
superior officer of deep drunkenness. He murmured something and soon
fell into a deep sleep. After waking, he had an almost complete
amnesia, knowing only that something disagreeable had transpired. He
remembered that he had been offered several little glasses of cognac
brandy by a comrade, and that he had drained them off quickly before
going on duty. He said that he had never drunk cognac before, and in
fact had drunk nothing for a long time.
The diagnosis of pathological intoxication was made, and the soldier
was thereby cleared of his dangerous situation; a criminal prosecution
was not instituted. He thereafter behaved with entire sobriety and
modesty, and he achieved his corporalcy and later became file leader.
Desertion in alcoholism may deserve the term “pathological.” Case of
fugue.
=Case 88.= (LOGRE, July, 1916.)
A “deserter” said: “I went because I drank a glass. I just went,
_comme ça_, without any motive.” He was somewhat feebleminded and,
in explaining the impulsivity of his act, he added: “I went like a
broken-down beast. I walked straight ahead, without knowing where I was
going and if I had been going to be killed, it would have been all the
same to me.” He could not that afternoon remember very well; but next
morning, after having slept, he regained full consciousness. He said
that he then found himself in a field near a cemetery. He had carried
his gun and equipment with him, but had lost them somewhere, and from
a military point of view, his desertion was complicated by loss of
effects. On coming to, he said to himself, “Where am I? How foolish
after fifteen months in the line! Probably I have deserted again.”
In fact, he had a month before left his post under exactly the same
conditions in the midst of a period of alcoholic excitement.
This alcoholic fugue is typical: drunkenness, impulsive and
subconscious ambulatory automatism, with partial amnesia,
disorientation, with mislaying of objects, followed by sleep and
immediate return to normality.
_Re_ fugue, see discussion under Cases 58 and 59. The French military
code cannot excuse victims of fugue even though executed in a quite
unconscious state, if the fugue is due to alcohol. There was a certain
procursive suggestion in the fugue of Case 88, who went “like a
broken-down beast,” straight ahead, without knowing where he was going.
Alcoholism: Amnesia experimentally reproduced.
=Case 89.= (KASTAN, January, 1916.)
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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