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
One of the reported cases in which lung splitting occurred from severe
concussion without external injury is not without interest in this
connection, reminding one, as the commentator says, of those cases of
severe concussion in which the interior of a building is injured while
the exterior escapes. In the same connection also the cited experiments
of Mairet and Durante on rabbits are not without instructiveness.
As a result of explosives set off close to these animals, pulmonary
apoplexy, spinal cord and root hemorrhages, and extravasations,
perivascular and ependymal, and into the cortical and bulbar gray were
found. Russca obtained direct and _contrecoup_ brain lesions, etc., in
a similar way.
Here and there throughout the book will be found references to
symptoms and syndromes which will have a particular interest for the
reader--soldier’s heart, trench foot, congealed hand, tics, tremors,
convulsions, sensory areas variously mapped, and forms of local
tetanus, the last being distinctly to be differentiated from pithiatic
contractures and those due to organic lesions of the nervous system.
Cases of an affection described by Souques as camptocormia, from Greek
words meaning to bend the trunk, were shown to the Neurological Society
of Paris in 1914 and later, the main features of this affection being
pronounced incurvation forward of the trunk from the dorsolumbar
region, with extreme abduction and outward rotation of the lower limbs,
pain in the back, and difficult and tremulous walking. In some of these
cases, organic lesions of the trunkal tissues were present, but in
addition psychic elements played a not unimportant part, and the cases
were restored to health by a combination of physical measures with
psychotherapy, enforced by electrical applications.
The part of this book given over to the discussion of treatment will
doubtless to some prove the most interesting section. The presentation
of the subject of therapeutics is in some degree a discussion also of
diagnosis and prognosis; and so it happens in various parts of the
volume that the particular subject under consideration is more or less
a reaffirmation or anticipation of remarks under other headings.
Similar results are brought about by various therapeutic procedures.
Nonne, Myers, and a few others bring hypnosis into the foreground,
although non-hypnotic suggestion plays a larger rôle by far.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
Reviews
Reviews
No reviews yet
Be the first to share your thoughts on this work.
Join the Discussion
Join the discussion
Sign in to leave a comment or review.
Sign InorCreate an account