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
The eye grounds proved normal and all the photomotor reflexes were
normal, though there was no pupil reflex to pain. The patient could
write readily to dictation printed letters. It would seem that these
printed letters mean that he had visual memories, as he traced the
characters as if from a design. Speech was monotonous with some
stuttering; but his speech had always been of this sort according to
information. He walked with difficulty, not merely on account of his
visual but on account of his equilibration disorders. Outside of his
seizures he always turned to the right and if left to himself standing
he turned to the right. If asked to walk straight ahead, he always
turned to the right. Silent and uncommunicative, he was amiable and
sometimes even gay. He often had troublous dreams, sometimes seeing
his relatives. He said he could bring up in his mind the faces of his
relatives and even the appearance of the Salpêtrière. Reflexes and
sensations were normal. There was a traumatic rupture of the tympanum.
Lumbar puncture showed a slight excess of albumin and 1.8 lymphocytes
to the cubic millimeter. The Mauser bullet was found by X-ray in the
left calcarine region with its base touching the median line, and
applied to the inner table of the skull about a centimeter above the
internal occipital protuberance pointing forward, outward, and upward.
He was treated on a salt free diet with bromides. The seizures grew
fewer and at the time of report two months had elapsed with nothing
but a slight vertigo and frequent nightmares. Intellectually also the
patient had improved.
The case is one of cortical blindness. The seizures are explained by
the vicinity of the right Rolandic region to the lesion. The rotatory
vertigo is to be explained by the contact of the Mauser bullet with
the tentorium and vermis of the cerebellum, which may also explain
the difficulties in orientation that occurred between the crises. The
visual hallucinations are doubtless due to lesion of the calcarine
region.
Tunisian theopath with mystical hallucinations; gun-shot wound
of occiput (bullet extracted): After the trauma, Lilliputian
hallucinations and micro-megalopsia.
=Case 106.= (LAIGNEL-LAVASTINE AND COURBON, 1917.)
A. ben S. was sent to Villejuif with the diagnosis: “depression,
feeling of impotence, discouragement,” having been found on the public
street. He was indifferent, almost completely mute, and was at first
considered not to understand French. In a fortnight, however, he was
talking freely and was then found to be afflicted with hallucinations,
melancholia, and delusions, apparently following trauma to the skull.
A. ben S. might have been about thirty years old, and was of a rich
family, indigenous in Tunis, well educated in the Koran and Arabic
literature.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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