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
“I am here to stay a month. Believe me, it is better here than
in the army. There is a rule that we may eat as much as we can
and everything is of the very best. The servants treat us like
brothers. Do not think it is a nuisance to be inside four walls
with a wee bit of a garden. No, indeed! But I have got to act
the fool and from the very first day I began to play and act
crazy with a kitten, so that if you had seen me you would say:
“Ramón is really crazy.” Rosina, dear, to avoid paying taxes
you have got to be a smuggler. And now that I am at the ball I
have got to dance. I want to see if after all the suffering I
cannot get something better. I am better off here than at the
regiment. I sleep in a fine warm bed, and they have only cold
straw; I have good food and drink and plenty of milk, and they
have poor food and drink and so little.
“I expect to go home in about three weeks. I would have been
there before if some fool of a spy at our place had held his
tongue and minded his own business. At the same time, Rosina,
dear, remember what I told you at Leghorn: that they had some
officers sent there to get information and instead of going
home they asked somebody else and were told that I had never
been sick and had never had neurasthenia. When this information
was got from the officers I was called to the office and they
read to me that all that I had said and done was not true. I
kept on acting the fool, and as they were still doubtful they
sent me here, where there is a professor who passes me every
morning in the garden and says: “How are you?” I always say:
“I am the same,” acting like a crazy man. Let me tell you,
Rosina dear, not to say anything contrary to this in your
letters because they open and read everything in order to find
out everything that happens and everything that is said. Now
what you must do is to ask me how I am feeling, and whether my
headaches are gone, and whether I have them all the time as
formerly, and any other trifle that will help me.”
Rosina’s fiancé had a strongly positive W. R. in the serum. It was
negative in the fluid. He was returned to the front.
II. HYPOPHRENOSES
(THE FEEBLE-MINDED GROUP)
Moron of use at front (alienist’s report).
=Case 35.= (PRUVOST, 1915.)
Vigouroux reports concerning a tanner of 19 who could not read, write
or calculate (3 plus 8 equals 14) and had been of the 1916 class in an
infantry regiment at Brest, on the occasion of his asking to be sent to
the front more speedily:
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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