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
A Landsturm recruit, 20, and somewhat peculiar in early life, got
whipped by his comrades for getting back too late from leave. The next
day he was commanded to carry a machine gun. He threw the gun down and
made for the barracks. He was put under psychiatric observation, as
he said he did not know what he was doing. His conduct seemed normal
at first and he explained that he had heard noises and singing in his
head,--pointing to the left ear where there was an otitis media. His
skill, knowledge, and general experience seemed well in hand. However,
he was not very communicative. Eventually a series of schizophrenic
symptoms came to light. He had been hearing threatening voices of
varying intensity for two years, sometimes a veil seemed to be before
his eyes, sometimes he heard his thoughts, and felt that his whole
personality was changing. He began to think that his facial traits were
gradually turning into those of the physician. The hallucinations were
so insistent that sometimes he did not know what he should do. He was
evidently unfit for military service, and the decision was also made
that the mental disease had been aggravated by service.
_Re_ schizophrenia in the service, most authors point out that there
was either patent or latent schizophrenia before mobilization. E. Meyer
attempted to make a study of the influence of the war on psychopaths.
He found that the ego of the psychopath remained relatively unaffected
by the war. Naturally, the paretics and the seniles were unaffected.
The grandiosity and self-centredness of the alcoholics remained as
prominent as ever. Seventeen schizophrenic cases were studied, and some
of these yielded entire apathy with respect to the war; others had the
content of their delusions somewhat affected. Saaler remarks on the
military tinge which dementia praecox assumes under war conditions.
Dementia praecox and manic-depressive psychosis alike show war changes.
Shot himself in hand. Delusions.
=Case 153.= (ROUGE, 1915.)
An infantryman, 26, left for the front August, 1914, was slightly
wounded, recovered, went back to the front, and then is said, in March,
1915, to have shot himself in the hand. When up for military review a
delusional state set in. It seems that he had been interned in several
hospitals for examination, but escaped four or five times because
physicians wanted to poison him and had partially succeeded.
He came to the Lemioux Custodial Institution, July 12, 1915. His
brother, 15, was a _voyou_; his sister, 16, was an imbecile. The
patient told about his military history and how he had shot himself in
the left hand, to be with a certain woman, how attempts had been made
to poison him, especially a certain man in Bordeaux, who wanted to
possess the woman in the case. In point of fact, the physicians could
not save him from this enemy.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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