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
organic sensations so suddenly that there was a break between the new
conscious status and the old. In consequence, the patient felt that
these new sensations no longer really belonged to him but were of a
xenic character, imposed upon him from without in such wise that he
continually asked himself whether he was really dreaming or no. This
man was a constitutional _intimiste_; a psychasthenic _en herbe_.
_Re_ neurasthenia, Lépine notes that there are transient and relatively
permanent cases. The term is often used to cover graver disorders,
such as various melancholias and anxieties. As a rule, in France, the
neurasthenics are evacuated for fatigue. There have been a number of
cases in officers, who find themselves unable to make decisions on
the minute and to remember military facts, or perhaps are unable to
make any physical or intelligent effort whatever. A true neurasthenic,
however, ought not to be a confused person. He is a man with a rather
unusual clarity of view as to his situation; and his trouble appears
to him to be somatic rather than as of the nature of a depression. He
feels that, if he could only rest, he could be cured. Neurasthenia,
according to Lépine’s war experience, is practically always the
disease of a highly cultivated nervous system, and appears in men
who have undertaken responsibilities. There is a group of young men
who have never been physically strong, bowled over at last by some
small event, such as a diarrhoea, and unable to carry on. Such men,
perhaps, are likely to have some traces of an old tuberculosis, an
adrenal insufficiency, or insufficient hepatic function. Martinet has
found them hypotensive and rather poorly aerated. There is another
group of neurasthenics (Maurice of Fleury) that are old arthritics,
with increased tension. These cases are not found at the front because
conditions there rather tend to reduce the trouble; but they are
found doing office work in the interior. Besides these cases of the
“cultivated” group, Lépine also finds a number of neurasthenics amongst
the peasants, in whom anxious ideas may lead to hypochondria.
Fugue, hysterical.
=Case 171.= (MILIAN, May, 1915.)
The fugue of an adjutant who left his regimental relief post at
Palameix Farm and was found several days later with his family at
Castelsarrasin, was reconstructed from partial records as follows:
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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