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
Of course, French military surgeons may have felt that a number of
these men would be of just such service in barracks and otherwise as
Case 37 (Pruvost). But for one or two cases like Cases 37 and 41 of
Pruvost, there are great numbers of other imbeciles who prove quite
useless in the army. Two of the Villejuif cases had been volunteers:
one volunteer declared that, if he had been intelligent, he never would
have enlisted! Ten cases proved unable to use a gun; one turned his gun
upon his mates. One regularly forgot the password. One (see Case 42
of Lautier) thought the war too long and tried to take command of the
company in order to finish the war one way or the other. Three of the
imbeciles had to be evacuated for desertion (unmotivated fugues); two
of them cursed their officers. Some of the imbeciles had an emotional
diarrhoea throughout their service.
Colin suggests that line officers and military surgeons ought to agree
that these men are not fit for service, and that the civil authorities
of the home towns should advise the review boards about known imbeciles
and criminals. In point of fact, previous knowledge of imbecility could
have been obtained quite readily in 27 of the 53 cases observed by
Colin.
A feeble-minded inventor.
=Case 38.= (LAIGNEL-LAVASTINE and BALLET, 1917.)
A jockey of Nîmes, 31, entered the service May 15, 1917. He
retired before the war. He was in the auxiliaries at the moment of
mobilization. Nothing is known as to any pathological episodes in his
past. He said he had been a poor scholar, had left the primary school
at eleven hardly knowing how to write or spell, but he had a lively
imagination and was a happy-go-lucky youth, playing many tricks on
the trades people. He tried a variety of ideas in the industrial or
commercial world with very varying success. He had a mechanical taste.
The Colonial Exposition at Marseilles caused him to float a variety of
projects, from that of having the visitors photographed on a camel to
the sale of lemonade. He said he had been a jockey and then a trainer
and had finally become a valet de jockey at Maisons Laffitte. He was a
gambler and invented a “system.” He made various inventions in relation
to horses. At the end of 1914 he had plans for a bomb thrower and
placed his discovery at the service of the War Minister. He was not
discouraged by the lack of success of the bomb thrower. He now made an
aerial torpedo carrier. He had the idea of the tanks. However, he found
the secret of his torpedo carrier printed in a magazine. There was a
slight difference between the German apparatus and his own.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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