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 corporal in the engineers was going the night of June 7th to a
creneau of mitrailleuses, when he was bowled over by a bursting
shell. He lost consciousness and was carried to the cantonment by
his comrades. Next morning he complained of headache and pain in the
back; had a convulsion; and proved on examination to have a left-sided
hemiplegia. He was given the diagnosis of hysterical hemiplegia.
He was sent to the 6th Army neurological center, and there showed a
complete left-sided hemiplegia with tendency to contracture. The left
knee-jerk and arm reflexes were exaggerated, and there was ankle and
patella clonus with Babinski sign. There was a dysesthesia on the
left side, with wrong interpretation and poor localization of painful
stimuli, and non-recognition of cold and heat sensations. Muscle sense
and stereognosis were impaired. There was a slight dysarthria. Lumbar
puncture yielded a clear hypertensive fluid with a slight lymphocytosis.
The situation remained without change for a month, when the patient
was evacuated to the rear. Thus, a shell-burst can produce destructive
nerve lesions without evidence of external injury.
_Re_ hypertensive spinal fluid, Sollier and Chartier cite Dejerine as
having brought the proof of hypertension in the cerebrospinal fluid in
Shell-shock cases. They also believe that the Shell-shock hysteria is
built up on a physical basis, more or less after the model of Charcot’s
hysterotraumatism. Shock, windage, and gas may bring about the same
kind of result. They rely especially on the cases of Sencert (201)
and Ravaut (202) for their argument (1915). They recall the fact that
Charcot found a hysteria due to lightning stroke and to high tension
electric accidents. They quote Lermoyez as attributing like results in
ear cases to labyrinthine shock, tympanic rupture, and ear hemorrhages.
Shell-shock: Hemiparesis, amnesia. Lumbar punctures early (but here as
late as one month after shock and after disappearance of hemiparesis)
showed PLEOCYTOSIS and hyperalbuminosis.
=Case 205.= (SOUQUES, MEGEVAND and DONNET, October, 1915.)
A French sergeant, a machine gunner, was the victim of shell-burst
September 25, 1915, was evacuated with a diagnosis of commotio cerebri,
and, when examined at Paul-Brousse October 5, showed a right-sided
hemiparesis, clouding of consciousness and somnolence, the hemiparesis
involving the face, with deviation of tongue to right, Babinski reflex
right, cremasteric and abdominal reflexes abolished on right. Normal
respiration and pulse.
Lumbar puncture October 7, that is, thirteen days after the injury,
yielded a clear fluid with an excess of albumin, 144 small lymphocytes
(some degenerate) and a single endothelial cell.
October 12, the knee-jerk was a little less lively on the right side.
The plantar reflex varied between extension and flexion on the right
side. The cremasteric reflex had been weakly regained on the right side.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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