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
February 15, 1915, a German soldier drank beer in the canteen and at
roll-call appeared tipsy. He then went to bed, but rose an hour later
to go to town. A quarter of an hour later, he went to a clerk’s house
and asked for paper, on the ground that the next day he was going to
march to Warsaw. The clerk gave him no paper, which he then tried to
get by force. A policeman arrested him and he said, “You just wait,
lame dog!” Upon examination he denied that he had ever been guilty
of any crime but had been in institutions on account of delirium. In
point of fact, this man had grown up in very bad surroundings, amongst
quarrels and disputes of his parents, who kept a disorderly house. At
19 he had been convicted of incest. He finally admitted having been
convicted for rape. It was found that he had once run out into the
front trenches; had been removed by an advance guard to a stable,
and then wondered why he was not in school. He described a number of
attacks of delirium although he had not drunk more than moderately.
He was given an experimental dose of 50 c.c. of alcohol, and in ten
minutes became excited, tried to get out of bed, attacked other
patients without reason, and was able to speak neither spontaneously
nor in response to questions. In a period of two hours he became clear
and asked what the trouble was. He knew only that he had taken alcohol.
_Re_ the experimental excitement produced in Kastan’s case by the
exhibition of alcohol, it is of note that Bérard has been much
impressed by the agitation that surgical cases of alcoholism undergo
when anesthetized. It may be that the anesthetics act similarly to the
experimental alcoholism of Kastan’s case. According to Bérard, these
phenomena of the anesthetized wounded (who are men recently evacuated
from the front and other hospital cases) are of larval alcoholism
brought out by the anesthesia. Bérard wonders whether rum issues at the
front are at all responsible therefor.
Desertion, drunk. Contributory factors.
=Case 90.= (KASTAN, January, 1916.)
Gottlieb S. left the barracks, January 25, 1915, met friends and drank
with them, remaining all night in the railway restaurant and waiting
room. He was promptly arrested.
According to the patient, he had always drunk a good deal and had once
fallen from his horse in the campaign, and become unconscious. After
this fall, he said he had been able to stand less alcohol than before.
There is doubt as to the syphilis of Gottlieb. He said he had been
infected once, but his further statement that he had six relapses is,
of course, questionable. As to the hypothesis of feeblemindedness,
it appears that in childhood he had learned badly and had been a
stammerer. He had been a herdsman, and after that a laborer. He finally
became a travelling man for a specialty photographer.
He had previously been convicted of an embezzlement, brawling, and
breach of the peace.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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