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
He said that when he received the uniform he had a longing for clean
underclothes. Requested to explain the meaning of the uniform, he
remarked: “Why, many have these things on.”
_Re_ dementia praecox, Lépine states that in the French army instances
of dementia praecox have been numerous in the interior, both at the
time of mobilization and at the time of calling out sundry new classes.
He notes that the courtmartial and invaliding experts have neither the
leisure nor the experience necessary to keep these men from going into
the army. The somewhat frequent remissions in dementia praecox make the
task all the more difficult. To be sure, the stuporous and catatonic
cases are not very much in evidence in the army; when such cases do
occur, it is easy enough to evacuate the patients to a hospital for
observation. Far more troublesome are cases of a less advanced or
milder nature. Here are cases in which judgment is deficient, and in
which quite unsystematic, incoherent, and transient delusional ideas
occur. The patient looks quite normal to the non-psychiatric expert.
Something odd happens which quite suddenly reveals the delusional
ideas. For example, there is a fugue, or else the soldier goes to his
superior and aggressively chides him for having troubled him the night
before. These particular psychopaths are among the most dangerous to be
found in the army.
Fugue, catatonic.
=Case 149.= (BOUCHEROT, 1915-6.)
A gunner, aged 23, enlisted on the expiration of his regular period of
service and was a good soldier, in excellent health, up to June, 1915.
He then began to have a few vague ideas of persecution. In a short
time these became more definite and he caused talk by requesting to
go into another corps because his comrades did not like him. He told
his brigadier that the soldiers were frightening him by magnetism. He
had hallucinations of hearing people say, “He will get it.” He kept by
himself, would not eat and stood motionless for long periods of time
before his mess-tin. He was often found in a dreamy state of apathy.
One day he left the cantonment without leave, wandered through fields,
had coffee in a village and then started off in no special direction.
The police took him without resistance the next day. He said, “My
comrades are in politics; they are going to cheat me.” He was brought
to Fismes and the ambulance surgeon said that he found he did not know
what he was about. He was amnestic for the fugue, explaining that he
went because he was frightened. It was hard to get him to eat.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
Shell-shock and other neuropsychiatric problems : $b Presented in five hundred and eighty-nine case histories from the war literature, 1914-1918 — John Shaqi
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