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 rifleman, 30 years old, was brought to a casualty clearing
station, looking like an imbecile, with a history of having wandered
about aimlessly, not knowing where he was or what he was doing. On
questioning, he remained absolutely speechless and terrified. Four days
later, in conversation with Major Myers, he was got to speak in a faint
voice about his wife, home, and occupation, saying that the month was
October (when it was actually August) and that he had been in France
two months, when it was actually twelve. He described emotionally
certain trench scenes, and then thought of his wife sewing.
Hypnotized, he remembered going into a dug-out after running away from
shells; he was made to talk in a loud voice. Next day, during hypnosis,
proper orientation for time reappeared. He was got to write an ordinary
soldier’s letter to his wife. The following day he was active, making
beds, but was mute (there was a case of mutism in the same ward). Under
hypnosis speech returned. He had gone to a horse show, and upon his
return, something hit his back; shells had begun to fall. Found hiding
in a shack, he was carried to a hospital in an ambulance. After this
hypnotic treatment, the power of speech was maintained, although his
voice became faint or failed whenever he was asked about the incidents
described above. Next day he waked speaking normally, nudging his
neighbor and asking, “Is it me that’s talking?” He had before appeared
dull and depressed, but now appeared an intelligent, agreeable, and
garrulous fellow. It appears that his wife was a war bride and he had
heard some months since that she was pregnant. He had been troubled,
thinking she was in money difficulties and kept thinking about a friend
whose wife had lost her first baby. Recovery appears to be complete
except for occasional headaches, and the patient is now serving in his
reserve battalion.
A neurasthenic volunteer.
=Case 175.= (E. SMITH, June, 1916.)
A man who volunteered for service at the outbreak of the war (he had
recently been an inmate of a sanatorium) was sent back to England as
neurasthenic after three trying months at the front. The case sheet
read that he was subject to dazed conditions. In hospital he suffered
from insomnia, and before his slight periods of sleep he constantly had
visions of two comrades who had been terribly lacerated at his side.
These hallucinations in their reality aroused in him a fear that he was
insane.
There were also terrifying dreams, beginning with episodes at the front
and ending with sex experiences. These dreams were ended by seminal
emissions. These formed a second cause for the patient’s belief that
he was insane, as he said he remembered literature read as a boy
concerning spermatorrhoea.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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