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
This patient was first brought to Jena November 23, 1914. An
illegitimate child, a moderately good scholar, he had worked as a mason
until he went into the army, in 1912. He worked as a soldier chiefly in
the officers’ casino because he got pains in his legs and knees in long
drills. At the outset of the campaign, however, he withstood the heavy
marching, although with difficulty. He was in his first actual skirmish
September 20. A shell struck nearby and threw him several meters;
whereupon he became unconscious and was carried away by the hospital
corps. When he woke up he could not speak or hear. Ten days later,
however, speech returned, and hearing returned in right ear; October,
deaf in the left ear, and he could not hear a watch tick on the right
side at a distance of 16 centimeters. He was examined at the otological
clinic in Jena October 12, where the drum membranes were both found
opaque, without reflexes or normal contours; hysterical attack on the
caloric test. The next day, on the medical visit, there was a screaming
attack. His plight seemed not so much simulation as one of traumatic
hysteria.
Again, after his stay at the nerve hospital, another hysterical
outburst was produced by a hearing test with vestibular apparatus, in
the ear clinic, February 6, 1915. The diagnosis was nervous deafness
with involvement of left ear.
The insomnia was successfully treated by sodium bicarbonate. There was
a slight improvement in speech. In March body weight had improved, but
there was a marked tremor of the right hand. In the next few months
there was a progressive improvement in general well-being, in speech
disorder, and in tremor. The auditory disorder remained unchanged. The
man now works in his father’s garden.
This case appears to show a combination of psychic and mechanical
injury. There are severe hysterical auditory and speech disorders.
Although the auditory disorder is of mechanical origin, the speech
disorder appears to be of psychogenic nature. It is somewhat remarkable
that the ear tests almost every time produce hysterical attacks in the
form of convulsive crying. Rather unusual is the general cutaneous
hyperalgesia, more marked about the ears.
Shell-shock (distant, neither seen nor heard); left tympanum ruptured;
semicoma eight days: Cerebellar syndrome and hemianesthesia. Recovery,
nine months.
=Case 218.= (PITRES and MARCHAND, November, 1916.)
A lieutenant underwent “shell-shock” either at night or in the early
morning, September, 1915, the shell bursting at a distance. He neither
saw nor heard the shell, lost consciousness and was eight days
semicomatose, failing to recognize his wife.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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