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 twenty-year old engineering student of high grade and without
hereditary taint, a scientific and non-introspective man of a brilliant
and gay disposition, not very religious, without special sexual
abnormality, was mobilized in class 1914, was put into the artillery,
and was soon appointed _maréchal des logis_. He left for the front
April, 1915, yet had to be evacuated in November. One afternoon, at the
end of a bombardment, he rose from a recumbent attitude and immediately
felt a dreamy, bizarre feeling, as if a fog lay between him and his
surroundings. Next day, after a good night, he woke in the same state.
Everything was bizarre and novel despite the fact that he recognized
men and things. A physician ordered rest and after a few days evacuated
him.
He was cared for in various hospitals, but the psychasthenia increased.
He felt a terrible and causeless anguish, with precordial constriction.
He felt as if he were about to be executed. His fears appeared after
seeing some turning object, such as a wheel or a cane twirling.
Gradually this fear was transformed into a genital excitation, though
lascivious pictures did not excite him. Seeing anything turning gave
him a voluptuous feeling in proportion to the speed of the rotation.
It seems that all sexual interest had been at a standstill for several
months in the early part of his disease, when suddenly this new
aberration appeared. It seems that a portion of the man’s work in the
artillery caused him to use screws and cogwheels every day. Attacks
of vertigo occurred, with the appearance of an infinity of small,
colorless spheres turning over one another, the whole forming a sort
of animated system of rotation. In the night this system was luminous
and somewhat like what one feels on compressing the globes of the eye.
There was a retraction of the visual field. The man would be found
in the dream state, especially after waking in the morning or when
some novel kind of act was being performed. He got somewhat better
and did not wish to go on leave, because he feared the recurrence of
these psychasthenic paroxysms. However, he took a leave July 14th.
In the first part of his journey he had some vertigo and some of the
voluptuous sensations, but in the next two days he was much better. He
returned to hospital without trouble.
The authors somewhat doubtfully term this case one of a quiet
psychasthenia, but in discussion still further talk arose as to the
diagnosis.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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