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 German 1st-lieutenant, on active service before the war, had left
the service because there was not enough for him to do in peace times.
During his war service, he became drunk and had two soldiers bound to
a doorpost, with coats unbuttoned and without their caps--a process
quite _verboten_. While in Königsberg, he reported himself ill, and
failed to go to a designated hospital. He was accordingly treated as
a deserter. He ran up bills with landlady and servant girls, saying
that he was going to receive money from his wife. Under hospital
examination, he said he was only a Baden man with a lively temperament.
He got angry at the phrase _test feeding_, refused food, got excited
when asked to help in the care of other patients, and wrote a letter
saying, “If it is the idea to make me nervous by removing the air from
me, by prescribing rest in bed--a punishment only suitable for a boy
who cannot keep himself neat--and such chicaneries, these philanthropic
attempts are bound to fail on my robust peasant nerves. Of course I
know that money considerations make the stay of every paying patient
desirable, but I am really too good for that. [The expenses were being
borne by the state.] I have openly stated what is being here done with
me is foolery, and I stick to that phrase. The food, already poor
enough, is no better, when the meat of a half-rotten cow comes twice to
the table.” This patient was, according to Kastan, a victim of general
paresis.
_Re_ general paresis and delinquency, Gilles de la Tourette long ago
maintained that there was a medicolegal period in paresis. Lépine in
his work on _Troubles Mentales de la Guerre_ speaks of the unexpected
frequency of general paresis in the army, and calls attention at the
outset to the medicolegal period. The danger of overt delinquency
is, in fact, greater under military than under civilian conditions
on account of the closer surveillance of the soldier. Desertion and
thievery are the main forms.
Unfit for service: General paresis.
=Case 13.= (KASTAN, January, 1916.)
Kastan describes a non-commissioned officer, who came voluntarily
into the clinic. It seems that he had absented himself (?) from the
army in the suburbs of Königsberg, September 3, 1914. He was arrested
October 7th. Once before he had been brought to Kastan’s clinic on the
suspicion of general paresis, but had been dismissed as non-paretic.
Brought in again in a condition of marked fear, he declared that he had
to fall behind his company while he was on the march on account of a
feeling of weakness. He had been taken to a hospital and then carried
to the suburbs of Königsberg, examined, and found unfit for service.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
Reviews
Reviews
No reviews yet
Be the first to share your thoughts on this work.
Join the Discussion
Join the discussion
Sign in to leave a comment or review.
Sign InorCreate an account