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
Next day he was lucid, oriented, and tranquil; entirely amnestic
for what happened the day before, though his acts were sufficiently
unusual. He had threatened his superior officer and been reproved and
sent to prison to think it over. In prison he had suddenly thrown
himself against another innocent person and clutched him tightly about
the neck. He threw another violently to the ground and then ran to help
the previous victim! Bound fast, he had succeeded in freeing himself
and thrown himself furiously against the prison door, whereupon he had
fallen to the ground in an epileptic fit. He had tachycardia (120) and
a generalized hypalgesia. The vasomotor reactions were excessive.
Upon investigation it proved that his mother had been subnormal and
that the patient had been constitutionally excitable and unstable,
given to attacks of anger and impulsiveness from youth up. In fact, he
had been in prison several times for violence. He described himself
in his restless spells as feeling a trembling all over his body as if
his blood were boiling in his heart and his head, whereupon he would
lose knowledge of what he was doing. He had been a quarrelsome boy,
pursuing his mates with knives and stones. Once, after arguing with
a car conductor, he had broken the car windows, turned everything
upside-down, and thrown the conductor into the street.
Case 60 is clearly in the same group as Case 59. The Veronese falls
into the same frame with the Milanese except that he appears not
to have been alcoholic. The insubordinations of the Veronese were
apparently carried out in a state of unconsciousness. The majority of
insubordinates appear not to be epileptics. Some authors have called
attention to pathological politeness as an occasional symptom in
epilepsy. Perhaps the majority of insubordinate cases are feebleminded
or schizophrenic.
Desertion in epileptic fugue.
=Case 61.= (VERGER, February, 1916.)
A blacksmith from the Rochefort Arsenal, 27 (nothing known as to
grandparents; father, now in the fifties, for 30 years in an asylum
with frequent attacks of furor; mother, 45, well and apparently
well-balanced; brother with the colors, wounded and decorated with the
military medal; a cousin-german, who has had a typical epilepsy--in
the patient himself enuresis up to 13 or 14, later, less frequently;
apparently no tongue-biting; no information as to infectious diseases;
graduate from primary school, apprenticed to a blacksmith; an unskilful
worker; never able to rise to the level of a _frappeur_), in 1909 had
passed the board of review and been put in the sixth division of the
line. Antebellum there was a history that one night at supper, he had
slipped away from quarters and gone 30 kilometres, home. His astonished
mother sent him back to the military post by railway.
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.
Elsewhere in the archive
Join the Discussion
Join the discussion
Sign in to leave a comment or review.
Sign InorCreate an account