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
_Re_ prisoners, Imboden found amongst 20,000 French soldiers taken
prisoner at Verdun after the severest drum fire and strain, only
five neurotic cases (data of Mörchen), and Wilmanns found but five
neurotic cases amongst 80,000 prisoners. Lust reviewed 20,000 war
prisoners in Germany and found singularly few instances of neurosis.
Shunkoff notes, however, that there are a number of psychotic cases
amongst the prisoners because the _mentally_ diseased who do not
disturb the military routine are kept in the line. Bonhoeffer found
amongst Serbians taken prisoners by Germany, emaciation, atrophy,
heart disease, and frequently tuberculosis. (See Case 166.) Bonhoeffer
noted the absence of psychoses amongst these Serbians, drawing the
general conclusion that campaign stress was unable to bring out
psychoses. But, although the exhaustion psychoses are not found,
there are exhaustion neuroses or states of acute nervous exhaustion,
characterized by somnolence and depression, followed by a mild degree
of overemotionality. vum Busch states that interned German civilians
have gone into psychosis frequently. It is said that one in 10,000
war prisoners in Germany has committed suicide. Bishop Bury found at
Ruhleben 60 or 70 cases of psychosis.
X. PSYCHONEUROSES
Hallucination in the field (surprise by _BOCHES_); scalp wound: Three
psychopathic phases--(_a_) over-emotionality, (_b_) obsessions, (_c_)
loss of feeling of reality (victim a “constitutional _intimiste_”).
=Case 170.= (LAIGNEL-LAVASTINE and COURBON, July, 1917.)
A cashier, 31 (of rather weak constitution but without hereditary
or acquired mental taint--a religious man and for religious reasons
chaste, always given to metaphysical speculation and introspection, but
on the other hand, much interested in sports and very sympathetic with
English manners), was about to go to live in the country on the advice
of his physician when the war broke out. He was called to the colors
and shortly lost his tendency to bronchitis, put on flesh, and felt
delighted with his situation.
After almost two years of effective service, June 2, 1916, when his
troop was cautiously advancing into a trench at the end of which they
might be taken by surprise, suddenly the officer cried, “_Sauve qui
peut!_ _The Boches are on us!_” The patient remembered seeing Germans
emerge from every side, remembered his fear, how he had turned about
and crossed over a palisade, and then no more until he found a scalp
wound being staunched by his comrades in the trench. He put on his own
dressing and followed his comrades on foot.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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