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 showed that there had been convulsions in the third and
fourth years of the patient’s life. There had been, however, nothing
epileptoid in the later childhood or developmental years of the
patient. However, a sister of the patient had suffered since childhood
from convulsions. It remains a question whether this episode is to be
regarded as reactive epilepsy--reactive, namely, to experiences in the
war--or whether we are dealing with a true epilepsia tarda.
_Re_ this episode following bullet wound, the compiler has placed
it after Mairet and Piéron’s case of Brown-Séquard epilepsy, but
apparently Bonhoeffer regards his case as probably a reactive one.
Unlike the case of Mairet and Piéron, Bonhoeffer’s case had an
epileptic soil (convulsions in childhood and epileptic sister). _Re_
the so-called reactive epilepsies, see remarks by Bonhoeffer under Case
57.
Epilepsia tarda in a lance-corporal without hereditary taint or
previous history save dizzy spells and excitability.
=Case 71.= (BONHOEFFER, July, 1915.)
A reserve lance-corporal, 24 years--a soldier from 1911 to 1913
without disciplinary record, and in his second year becoming
lance-corporal--was in the campaigns in Belgium, East Prussia, and
Poland, making long marches and going through several battles. In the
middle of October, 1914, he fell from a horse and suffered a contusion
of the thorax, after which blood appeared in the sputum. In November he
was brought to the reserve hospital in Berlin, and there had convulsive
seizures. Before transfer to the Charité Clinic, a seizure occurred,
and he was brought into the clinic in a characteristic dazed state.
Thereafter he was clear but often out of humor and irritated. Three
weeks later came a brief attack, probably epileptic in nature, with
restless half-delirious sleep following.
There was nothing in childhood or in the family history to indicate
epilepsy. However, the patient himself stated that from 1913 onward,
after his period of military service, he had from time to time felt
attacks of dizziness after exertion, and that he had become more easily
excitable than before.
The attacks in the lance-corporal are probably not to be attributed to
the thoracic contusion, according to Bonhoeffer, because of the long
period that elapsed after the thoracic injury, and their development
nocturnally without special occasion. According to Bonhoeffer, we are
probably here dealing with a late epilepsy.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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