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
The history indicates that this patient up to his sixteenth year had
been a victim of occasional enuresis, often cried out in his sleep or
even rose from bed. Occasionally he suffered from such violent sudden
headaches that he would have to sit down. He was easily irritated, and
had once been arrested for assault. As a soldier, however, he had never
been guilty of any breach of discipline. Mild headaches would follow
drinking. These phenomena in the history pointed in the direction of
epilepsy. According to Bonhoeffer, we cannot entirely exclude contusion
of the brain from the shell injury. However, there were no cerebral
symptoms, and the interval before the occurrence of the attacks rather
indicates that we are dealing with a genuine epilepsy. As for the
hemihypesthesia, this is a hysterical “_superposition_,” which does
not interfere, according to Bonhoeffer, with the genuineness of the
epilepsy.
Shell-wound; musculocutaneous neuritis: Brown-Séquard’s epilepsy.
=Case 69.= (MAIRET and PIÉRON, January, 1916.)
An infantryman, 30, a gardener, was wounded in the right forearm by
a shell fragment, which fractured the ulna, September 7, 1914, at
Revercourt. Despite much fragmentation of the bone and suppuration, the
wound healed with two cicatrices, where the fragments had gone in and
had come out. The scarring process was over in December.
However, in the middle of January, 1915, this man began to suffer from
headaches and insomnia, with vertigo and buzzing in the head, “as if
an airplane inside.” Sometimes arms and legs would stiffen, and the
man would tremble, have to lie down, and even lose consciousness for
a quarter of an hour, waking up tired, wandering, and with feelings
in his head. These crises, at first occurring every week, later grew
frequent. Finally there was a very complete attack, in which he fell
out of bed, got up, made several turns about the room, and went back to
bed; and in the morning, was dull and disoriented. Accordingly, he was
sent to the central military neuropsychiatric service of the general
hospital at Montpellier, November 10.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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