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
“As you will see, I did not reach Dn. but only got as far
as here [Another hospital]. I will tell you how it happened.
Probably I ought to have remained in Tübingen for a while
longer and perhaps then nothing would have happened to me. You
will remember that I was more nervous and excited the last days
than I had been before, and the cause was also known to you. I
wanted to get home in some way and so I pretended to be as well
as possible. That crying attack, or whatever it was [an outcry
in a frightful dream] had not been thought of by the physician
any further, you know, and so I didn’t think anything about
it either. Then the head doctor asked me once if I had any
trouble left. Well, I spoke out everything I had to say, but
no further attention was paid to that either. Then when I took
a walk and after walking slowly two hours could hardly stand,
was trembling all over and had a high pulse and also a violent
acute pain in the region of the heart, that wasn’t of any
importance either. Well, then I just got better from day to day
and so I got what I wanted only too easily because they wanted
the space and I certainly would have gone home and not to Dn.
as I should have. [His reserve battalion was at Dn.] I got
into the wrong train at St. so as to go home. I kept saying to
myself, ‘You can’t do that, it will be punished.’ Nevertheless
I couldn’t act any other way because I was really sick from
longing for home.”
Here he described an episode in a comrade who had lain beside him in
the clinic, had gone off with him and had a hysterical excitement in
Heidelberg so that he had to be detrained.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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