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
After three weeks, the tailor came to and remembers that the first word
he heard was Munich. Astonished to be in Bavaria he asked for paper and
pen to write to his people, but found he could not write, though still
able to dictate a little to his comrades. Besides agraphia there was
hemiplegia on the right side, marked exhaustion, rapid fatiguability of
vision, power of concentration but slightly diminished, and apathy for
his surroundings; emotions normal.
Three weeks later the power to write returned; after six weeks,
sleep; memory was restored in from six to eight weeks; the paralysis
disappeared in twelve weeks; vision became normal in three or four
months; the dreams ceased after seven months. The mood for the first
two months after regaining consciousness was slightly elevated; for
another two months slightly depressed. The mood then became normal.
There was, then, in this case complete recovery save for slight
overfatiguability in a period of seven months. There were still a few
residuals of hemiplegia. An operation in November, 1916, removed a
shrapnel ball, one centimeter in diameter, from a dural scar.
This is a case of acute reaction psychosis of exogenous origin lasting
three weeks and leading to complete recovery in an after phase of from
four to seven months.
Normal subject, wounded and thrown to ground by shell explosion:
Recurring MEMORIES of battle scene; persistently HYPERESTHETIC healed
shell WOUND, with pupil and pulse changes on pressure of the scar.
=Case 221.= (BENNATI, October, 1916.)
A lieutenant of artillery, student (one of his brothers dead of
meningitis), suffered somewhat from diarrhœa on the battlefield.
He was, however, always able to obtain the best of food. External
conditions did not seriously interfere with sleep. In particular
there was no excessive dampness where he was. He was preoccupied with
having to act as substitute for the commandant of the battery. He was
not afflicted by the thought of his parents far away; their financial
affairs were entirely satisfactory.
This almost normal man was wounded after a day of incessant fighting
five months after going to the front. When firing ceased, he withdrew
with his soldiers to a trench. Here he was followed by an enemy gas
shell which killed some and wounded others. While outside the trench
shifting mutilated soldiers to the rear, he was hit by another shell
of which a chip wounded him in the left thigh. He felt a terrible
spanking blow that threw him to the ground and gave him great pain.
He was carried on a stretcher to the medical post across the zone of
fire; thence to a field hospital and from there to a hospital further
from the front. He had been for almost seven hours in a sector of the
fighting line which had been almost continuously active.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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