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
In another case chloroformed 17 months after recovery from tetanus
no such phenomena appeared. It would seem that the impregnation with
tetanic virus or toxin must last in the nervous system a good deal
longer than the apparent disease clinically lasts, but that this
belated and concealed intoxication eventually passes.
The phenomena are perhaps _analogous to_ those of _Babinski and
Froment’s_ so-called post-traumatic physiopathic or _reflex phenomena_.
It was following the special work of Babinski and Froment upon the use
of chloroform anesthesia in detecting physiopathic conditions that
Monier-Vinard made his observations in cases of tetanus.
Shell-shock from falling of shell at a distance: Hysterical hemiplegia,
terminating in brachial monoplegia. Case to show that the reflex or
physiopathic disorders of Babinski and Froment may occur without
mechanical injury in the region involved.
=Case 281.= (FERRAND, June, 1917.)
A soldier of the class of 1917 who never went to the front, while
in training at Belfort, felt violent emotion on the occasion of
the falling of a big shell in the town of Belfort. The explosion
was a good distance from him. He lost consciousness a few moments,
February 23, 1917, and almost at once found himself unable to move
his left side. He was hemiplegic three months, but his leg shortly
regained power. December 23 he entered a neurological center with his
arm flaccid and a paralysis affecting the shoulder also. There was
an almost complete anesthesia of the arm terminating in segmentary
fashion about the shoulder, and the whole of the left side was slightly
hypesthetic, although there was no disorder of motion except in the
arm. The tendon reflexes of the left arm were exaggerated, and there
was even contracture upon percussion of the muscles themselves.
Percussion of the thenar and hypothenar eminences produced movements
of the hand. There were several vasomotor disorders. Percussion
led to large vasomotor plaques, and rubbing of the skin produced a
reddening which passed away slowly. The hand was red and cold. Slight
electrical hyperexcitability of flexors with feeble galvanic current;
excitation of the extensors not associated with any contractions of the
antagonist muscles. Threshold lower for flexors on the affected side
in the forearm. Half centimeter atrophy of the biceps. The forearm and
hand were possibly slightly increased in volume from a blue edema of
the dorsal surfaces. The man was very timid, complained little, and
accepted all treatment, which, however, was not very effective. This is
presented by Ferrand as a case with physiopathic disorder in the sense
of Babinski and Froment, though it does not present any sign of organic
lesion whatever.
Shell fire: Delayed shell-shock symptoms, sub-lethal, appearing in
England.
=Case 282.= (MCWALTER, April, 1916.)
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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