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
An affective complex, passing from the surprise of the shell-shock over
to a fright based on clear though wrong ideas of what might happen to
him, had left him without sufficient power of _autocritique_.
Weakling, twice buried by shell explosions in one day: Change of
character; fear; three fugues (“It is stronger than I am”).
=Case 52.= (PACTET and BONHOMME, July, 1917.)
An infantryman, Class of 1913, at the front from September, 1914, had a
somewhat infantile build physically but was intellectually of average
powers, having been a type-setter (three years in a job). However, the
confined life had borne hard upon him and his father put him on a farm.
He passed through his military service successfully, though he was
given two weeks in the guardhouse for overstaying Easter leave. He was
suggestible enough at this time to think that he would not be punished
very severely, since there were other men whose leaves did not expire
at the same time as his own.
He was buried twice in the same morning, March, 1915, at Bois Le
Prêtre, spent four or five days in hospital, and went back to his
battalion. But now there was a change in his character. Formerly
indifferent to danger, he was now apprehensive every time he went to
the line and felt an almost irresistible impulse to make for the rear.
He was condemned to five years in prison, June, 1915, but was finally
sent back to the front.
However, in July he left his company a second time as it was going into
the trenches, and this time the captain simply asked him to do better.
A third fugue, a few weeks later, sent him back to court-martial, and
thence to be examined by alienists. He was perfectly conscious at the
time of the fugues and understood his duties and possible punishments.
All he would say was, “_It is stronger than I am._” Fear outweighed
every consideration after the episode of the shell burials.
The man may be regarded as a hypobulic, somewhat feebleminded person,
able to get on in civil life but thrown out of gear by war. Of course,
the concept of fear as a disease can easily be overdone; however,
here was a case in which three desertions occurred; the third after
severe punishment. In the differential diagnosis, epilepsy, alcoholism,
impulsive poriomania, must be considered, as well as feeblemindedness.
III. EPILEPTOSES
(THE EPILEPTIC GROUP)
Diagnosis “epilepsy” revised to neurosyphilis.
=Case 53.= (HEWAT, March, 1917.)
A Scotch soldier, in the Royal Navy, 43, was admitted to the Royal
Victoria Hospital at Netley, as major epilepsy. He had been 12 years
a stoker, and 16 years before admission had suffered from syphilis, a
chancre locally treated with black wash, without secondary rash.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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