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 soldier of the Ninth Engineers, 28, a Beaux-Arts student, was
wounded, December 19, 1915, by stones and gravel thrown in his eyes
by a shell-burst. The eyelids swelled and the eyes filled with tears.
He was treated at the relief station and then evacuated to Verdun.
The edema disappeared in five weeks, but it was impossible for him to
look at light. February 2 he was evacuated to Nice, where he received
the diagnosis of traumatic keratalgia, blepharospasm, and photophobia.
After eight days’ leave he went back to his corps; but the eye troubles
persisted and he was sent to the ophthalmological center at Angers, May
18, 1915.
Both his father, 67, and his mother, 58, were irritable and odd. Three
brothers and three sisters were also more or less neuropathic, and one
of the sisters had been in a hospital for the insane with a persecutory
mania. The patient had a daughter, fourteen months, well.
The man was a nervous, impressionable person, who wept at the slightest
emotion. With an effort of will he could open his eyes, but if one
tried to open them passively there was stout resistance. In the dark
the occlusion was not so complete. Both eyelids were wrinkled and
folded and made jerky, fibrillary movements. The conjunctiva and cornea
were normal (fluorescein test), but the palpebral conjunctiva was red
and injected. The patient said he had subcutaneous pains recurring at
irregular intervals above and below the left orbit, brought out or
exaggerated by pressure; but such pressure had no effect upon the lid
movements. Visual acuity was normal, but the use of ophthalmometer
was impossible, as was measurement of the visual field. There seemed
to be no disorder of chromatic sense. The reflexes could not be fully
examined; knee-jerks preserved. There was a zone of anesthesia to pin
prick, less marked to heat, on the whole left side of the face. W. R.
negative.
Shell-shock; burial; blow on occiput: Blindness.
=Case 269.= (GREENLEES, February, 1916.)
A man in the third Wiltshire regiment was buried in a shell explosion
and struck by a large mass of earth on the back of the head. When dug
out, he was found blind. It was thought at the time that the severe
blow at the back of the head had “concussed” the occipital cells for
sight.
Some months later the man was sent to Mr. Pearson’s home for blind
soldiers in London; but two months later was returned to Weymouth,
under Greenlees’ charge. He thought himself worse, since now he could
not see light at all. He had trained himself to take care of himself
and steered confidently aside from obstacles in walking about. He was
able even to learn the various colors by the sense of touch, according
to Greenlees; thus, blue was diagnosticated against red: according to
the patient, a piece of colored card always had a rougher feel if it
was blue than if it was red. In fact, his work consisted of making
colored net bags.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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