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
Upon investigation, these fugues seemed to have the classical features
of epileptic fugues. They were sudden, unconscious, blindly automatic,
almost completely forgotten afterwards and of a stereotyped and
recidivistic nature. Most of the fugues had been preceded by a slight
excess in drinking. An investigation was made to see if there were any
convulsive antecedents; none were found. This mental epilepsy, then,
it was thought, must be an isolated symptom, free from every motor
symptom. But his mother and one of his brothers had also shown a number
of attacks of some sort of epilepsy. In all three cases there was
impulsivity, unconsciousness, absurdity, recidivism, and refractoriness
to treatment. On these grounds the fugue was regarded as pathological
and as epileptic probably. The patient himself thought that these
_coups-de-tête_ and this mania for running away without knowing where,
made really a very ugly fault, particularly in a soldier.
_Re_ such specialists in escapes as Case 62, Lépine speaks of a type of
military delinquent which he calls _Ceux qui sautent le mur_. Some of
the fugue subjects, as well as other types of imbalance can apparently
be held by no possible kind or degree of discipline. They jump any
guardhouse or any other form of imprisonment through what amounts to
a wild instinct for liberty. In some cases, this instinct appears in
a relatively pure form; that is, without any combined tendency to
dipsomania and without any sexual factor. Some of them are, in fact,
very good soldiers, especially in shock troops. They, in fact, belong
to what one might call the good element among delinquents. In the
French Army some of them have been old legionaries and have even been,
as in Case 62, previously condemned for desertion. They form a curious
minority among the wall jumpers. Wall-jumping makes, so to say, the
entire pathological phenomenon, and the recidivism is a part of the
disease.
A disciplinary case: Epilepsy and other factors.
=Case 63.= (CONSIGLIO, 1917.)
An Italian private in the artillery (father dead of general paresis)
had been a victim of infantile convulsions and of convulsions with loss
of consciousness up to 18 (convulsions with shouts and violence in the
streets of Rome; had to be put in a straight-jacket at the municipal
hospital).
He developed more convulsions during antisyphilitic treatment in the
military hospital. He was a very poor soldier, of the rough and violent
sort, and after eight months of service had to be assigned to a special
disciplinary company, with which he remained for fifteen months. Here
also he was punished frequently, and was given a period of four months’
imprisonment for refusal to obey the officers. Then for a period of
several years he had no convulsions whatever.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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