Shell-shock and other neuropsychiatric problems

According to his story, he had lost touch with his troop at the end of September, 1914, and had lived in several lodgings in T---- up to October 19, when he was arrested. He sai...

Examination showed nonorganic nervous disorders, consisting in a variable and patchy anesthesia of the legs, anesthesia of the conjunctiva and pharynx, and over-reaction, with s...

On examination, July 28, 1915, he would in the standing position hold his legs together with the feet resting on their external borders, especially on the left side. The toes we...

An extraordinary change came over him January 27 (sixteen days after admission). He went into the garden, apparently deaf and shouting his answers, accompanied by Sister Margare...

I went out to France on the 3/11/14 and I was two days at Le Havre and then we went on to our 1st Batt. When we arrived at our destination the regiment was in the trenches so we...

Once when a tooth was to be pulled a post-hypnotic suggestion that no more pain would be felt was given, nor was any pain felt. Headache persisted after the first two or three s...

Upon investigation, it was found that the man had been in a provincial sanatorium for some form of degenerative mental disease with excitement. He, at this time, had given a num...

It seems that the man relied on the opinion of the two physicians and discounted that of the third. He thought himself the victim of an injustice, and not knowing how to get on,...

A German soldier, 35, of a nervous make-up (his mother was nervous, and he had been nervous and tremulous and easily excitable, and alcoholic to the extent of at least 5 glasses...

After a fortnight he was again given ether and a little chloroform was added. The yes-no test was again positive. He was allowed to recover gradually from the chloroform, but he...

On July 13, 1915, a bomb, dropped by an airplane, fell near an Italian soldier, killing many comrades, and throwing the man to the ground unconscious. He awoke several hours lat...

Walking with the eyes open yields in marked instances a sidewise bending or even the classical staggering called the duck’s walk and drunken gait upon a broad base. The most del...

The patient was transferred back to the reserve hospital on January 2, 1915, whereupon the stammering became worse, sleep restless, and arms and legs subject to spasmodic pains...

The man was tall, powerfully built, without visceral disease, speech defect, or other symptoms except that both pupils showed the typical Argyll-Robertson phenomenon. The deep r...

An infantryman, 20, boxer by profession, was brought with other wounded, in the night, to Saint Nicolas Hospital and was seen next morning, August 24, in bed, lying motionless o...

Early in the war, a lad, 19, was blown up by a shell. He was sent home paralyzed from waist down, and was seen by Capt. Buzzard after he had spent ten months in various hospital...

September 11, 1916, he had been admitted to Number 3 General Hospital, France, in a noisy, excited, insolent state: said he saw spirits of the dead; heard his sister urging him...

“Rapid reëducation follows at once. He is given no time to think, but urged to move the arm more and more strongly, to grip the physician’s hand, to flex and extend the elbow, e...

A man enlisted September, 1914, went to France after six months’ training, immediately put himself on sick list, and was admitted to a base hospital: Diagnosis, sciatica. Later,...

There were two groups of symptoms; persistent headache, painful hyperacousia, vertigo, tremulous walk, cervical spinal column stiff and painful both spontaneously and to pressur...

November 27, 1914, after a night in the trenches, when two shells burst near him, the adjutant turned up at the relief post with wild eyes and a complaint of fatigue, and of an...

A Russian private, 24, sustained shell-shock April 14, 1915. He was observed, when the shell burst, to crouch down, and then to fall to the ground, unconscious. The unconsciousn...

A man was received in No. 3, General Hospital: Diagnosis, epilepsy. He was shortly sent to the convalescent camp and then returned, having had two attacks. Russel watched for an...

A French soldier arrived in France from Germany in a reciprocal exchange of prisoners supposed to be incapable of bearing arms. The man showed a paraplegia with clonic movements...

He re-enlisted in August, 1914, and had an attack of orthopnea and edema after exposure at a review. However, he improved and went to France in May, 1915, where he again had sym...

An officer and his servant were blown up by a shell. The servant ran to fetch a stretcher for the officer, to whom he was much attached, but on his return the officer made a few...

“We had been firing without interruption four days, and then were sent back. While going back from cover we were under shell fire. Three or four horses fell. I got a glancing bl...

The right angle of the mouth was withdrawn slightly upward and outward, and lagged a little in active movements. The protruded tongue deviated completely into the right angle of...

F. K., a 23-year old soldier, in civil life a turner, of Polish descent, and of a somewhat nervous and easily excitable disposition, early in August went from Strassburg into th...

A seaman from the _Derfflinger_ was brought into a naval hospital with loss of voice, December 22, 1914, able to speak only in a whisper. As a child he had had diphtheria, but r...

_Re_ the temperature hallucinations noted by Myers, these are to be distinguished from true vasomotor disorders. Babinski believes that he has definitely established that, thoug...

“Private ---- was close to a shell which burst among a company standing in the road, killing 20 and wounding 20 others. He worked well in assisting the wounded, and then proceed...

A German soldier had a bullet pass through his right eye and lower jaw, leaving a fistulous opening from the mouth. He said that he was completely blind, but ophthalmological ex...

The occipital pain had now become less; the musculocutaneous nerve was not so large. Only a few headaches followed during the months of October, November, and December. After No...

An accountant, 20, in the 135th infantry sustained shock from mine explosion near his trench, March 6. He was kept two days at the relief station. March 8, at the ambulance, he...

Upon the night of May 26-27, 1915, this soldier found himself in the position of a sentry, opposite the enemy. He told his comrade that he had to go away for a time, leaned his...

As against the diagnosis of hysteria, three herpetic clusters appeared on the skin of the left thigh, from three to six inches above the knee. Elliot regards it as certain that...

He was sent that evening to the neuropsychiatry center, walking jerkily and as if slightly drunk, with a number of small gesticulations and murmurings. He was immediately isolat...

On the suspicion of an abdominal form of local tetanus, chloral was given; but the condition grew worse. The sudden contractions spread from the waist to the feet, from November...

_Re_ Nonne’s enthusiasm for hypnosis, see under Case 526. Nonne, contrary to Babinski and Froment, would regard even the severe and obstinate vasomotor disturbances as purely fu...

October 9, the clouding of consciousness was less marked. The headaches and amnesia were constantly complained of; the reflexes were normal. October 12, there was less headache....

He was able to converse very well and spontaneously (he remembers having lost consciousness at the explosion of the grenade and not coming to until after his arrival at the hosp...

A careful examination about the middle of November showed the persistence of a severe paresis of the left arm, and a less marked motor weakness of the right arm. Both legs were...

A stoker, 45, was admitted to the Royal Naval Hospital, Haslar, November 6, 1916, from the Fifteenth General Hospital in Alexandria, to which he had come from a hospital in Bomb...

An infantry sergeant was brought to the ambulance, one day in November, 1914, with a paralysis which had set in immediately upon the explosion of a large shell a short distance...

=89.= We are now ready to consider in how far Shell-shock[13] is a distinctive disease. The physical event, shell-shock[13] we have seen at work in most of the major groups of m...

An infantryman, 20, came to the Sixth Army Neurological Center, October 13, 1916, as a case of “choluria, due to shell explosion; epistaxis needs watching.” He was somnolent, ha...

=42.= Suppose then that syphilis, epilepsy, and somatic (non-nervous) disease are out of the running, =we come practically down to the psychoneuroses=, knowing that knotty probl...

In differential diagnosis, one has to consider, according to Roussy and Lhermitte, Pott’s disease, traumatic spondylitis, as well as Bechterew’s vertebral ankylosis, Pierre Mari...

September 22 there was found a slight laxity of the patella tendon, as well marked on the left side as on the right. The right side was more cyanotic, due to the inactivity of t...

This condition lasted a few days only, whereupon the mental and bodily condition greatly improved. Daily walks were then taken in the garden and in the city without exertion. Th...

Another case was wounded in the right arm by a shell fragment September 7, 1914, and showed two scars above the epitrochlea and along the internal border of the triceps. Examina...

A soldier in the Territorial Infantry, 42, a gardener who went to taverns, as he said, “like everybody else,” a widower with two children, a good worker though irascible, had ha...

Régis remarks that battle dreams of this nature occasionally affect alcoholics in garrison or at home. The victim ought not to be hastily committed to an asylum, but should be t...

A soldier, 40, got a scalp wound but probably did not lose consciousness. However, when observed three months after the injury, though fat and well-looking, the patient could no...

There is no record of any disability or symptom of nervous or mental disease at enlistment. The first symptoms were noted by the patient in May, 1916, six months or more after e...

Dupuoy speaks of the reason for the hysterical “choice” of this disease, since his mother had had a probably organic hemichorea, also on the right side, with which she died at t...

Often such infection may be due to a tragical form of “negligence.” But, as pointed out in a work on Neurosyphilis, 1917, I believe that any form of licensing system, official o...

=100.= Are there, then, phenomena of peripheral nerve shock analogous to the phenomena of spinal cord and brain shock which we find in so many cases? But if so, it is clearly un...

In May, 1916, the patient was invalided and found to be still in possession of the above-mentioned signs. Similar phenomena have been found in the _main figée_ acrocontracture,...

The “bent-back” lasted about a month, when he began to stand up again. He passed through various hospitals and was evacuated to the Salpêtrière. He then walked with the left leg...

The scalp movements were quick, affecting the fronto-occipitalis muscles as well as the auricular muscles. The displacement was from behind forward, and then from before backwar...

Normal subject, wounded and thrown to ground by shell explosion: Recurring MEMORIES of battle scene; persistently HYPERESTHETIC healed shell WOUND, with pupil and pulse changes...

Note: Project Gutenberg also has an HTML version of this file which includes the original illustrations. See 52105-h.htm or 52105-h.zip: (https://www.gutenberg.org/cache/epub/52...

Then there is another case of an obvious imbecile who was quite without any idea of military rank and often got punished for treating his superiors like his comrades and was the...

These references were collected in the main by Sergeant Norman Fenton both before and after his entering the army, in connection with preparations for the work of one of the Neu...

=Chevallier.= Installation et résultats du service de rééducation physique et massage au cantonnement de Villetaneuse occupé par le N^e régiment de Zouaves. Arch, de méd. et pha...

=Mott, F. W.= The Lettsomian lectures on the effects of high explosives upon the central nervous system. Lancet, Lond., 1916, i, v. 190, pp. 331-338, pp. 441-449, pp. 545-553; a...

=Soukhanoff, S. A.= De la conviction délirante d’être prisonnier de guerre; contribution à l’étude des troubles mentaux provoqués par la guerre actuelle. Ann. méd.-psychol., Par...

=Mairet, A. et Piéron, H.= De quelques problèmes posés par la neuropsychiatrie de guerre au point de vue des réformes. Paralysies générales, crises d’épilepsie apparues ou aggra...

=Parsons, J. H.= The psychology of traumatic amblyopia following explosions of shell. Proc. Roy. Soc. Med., Lond., 1914-15, v. 8, (neurol. sect.), pp. 55-68; also Lancet, Lond.,...

We found ourselves looking on the Shell-shock neuroses as, like other functional neuroses, in a sense mental diseases. Perhaps we would better say (to get rid of all suspicion o...

=Forsyth, David.= Functional nervous disease and the shock of battle: a study of the so-called traumatic neuroses arising in connection with the war. Lancet, Lond., 1915, ii, pp...

=Bilancioni, G.= Di un metodo sicuro per svelare la simulazione della sordita bilaterale. Arch. ital. di otol. (etc.), Torino, 1916, xxvii, 516-524. Also: Policlin, Roma, 1917,...

=Hertz, A. F.= (See also Hurst.) Paresis and involuntary movements following commotion produced by the bursting of a large shell. Proc. Roy. Soc., Méd., Lond., (sec. Neurol.), 1...

=Rouge, C.= Influence de la guerre actuelle: (1) Sur le mouvement de la population de l’asile de Limoux du 2 août 1914 au 31 décembre 1915; (2) Sur les psychoses des aliénés int...

=Dejerine et Mouzon.= Les lésions des gros troncs nerveux par projectiles de guerre. Les différents syndrômes cliniques et les indications opératoires, Presse méd., May 10, July...

=Laignel-Lavastine et Courbon, P.= Stéréotypies de la marche, de l’attitude et de la mimique avec représentation mentale professionnelle de l’ouie consécutives aux émotions du c...

=Vincent, Cl.= Du pronostic des troubles nerveux d’ordre réflexe. Persistance ou augmentation des troubles vasomoteurs et de l’amyotrophie malgré une mobilisation active et prol...

Babinski, 157, 395, 401, 454, 456, 469, 481, 491, 498, 535, 543, 544, 554, 563, 566, 568, 569, 576, 578, 603, 604, 605, 643, 647, 671, 723, 746, 748, 788, 819, 833, 848, 856, 85...

Medicolegal, 509 (see also Desertion, Fugue, Epilepsy, Simulation, etc.), 837, 838, 841, 862, 864, =Cases= =1=, =3=, =11=. BIB. 914, 917, 920, 925, 926, 932, 935, 938, 940, 941,...

The data from all the belligerent countries, collected in this book, go far to prove that, whatever at last you elect to term Shell-shock, you must pause to consider whether you...

He returned four months later; he was still occupied with his disease, still going to physicians and buying drugs. It took six months more before the man could be discharged fro...

Differences in muscle tonicity, in mechanical irritability of the muscles, and the presence or absence of fibrotendinous contractions are indications of a separation between the...

Treatment, Shell-shock neuroses, Psychoelectric, 696, 815, 827, especially 897 and 898, =Cases= =230=, =235=, =250=, =264=, =401=, =404=, =418= (=428=), =478=, =513=, =514=, =55...