A contribution to the study of shell shock : being an account of three cases of loss of memory, vision, smell, and taste, admitted into the Duchess of Westminster's War Hospital, Le Touquet / by Charles S. Myers.

  • Charles Samuel Myers
Date:
1915?]
Catalogue details

Licence: In copyright

Credit: A contribution to the study of shell shock : being an account of three cases of loss of memory, vision, smell, and taste, admitted into the Duchess of Westminster's War Hospital, Le Touquet / by Charles S. Myers. Source: Wellcome Collection.

    14/16 (page 14)
    short words. Visual acuity (investigated by Colonel Lister, A.M.S.)—at first 6/24, but improved by encouragement and the indiscriminate use of weak + or — lenses to nearly 6 6. Smell: Has complained until to-day of a subjective sensation of the odour of cordite. This has left him “ since the bowels were open.” Left nostril fails to detect smell of ether, peppermint, eucalyptus, ammonia, carbolic acid, or iodine tincture, all of which, save the last, are at once recognised when placed beneath the right nostril. No signs of nasal obstruction. Taste: Only tastes very strong solutions of sugar, salt, and acid, and then only when the tongue has been withdrawn and moved about the mouth ; the taste is described as “faint.” Feb. 1st.—He complains that he gets very excited when anyone addresses him. He still fails to remember how he got to the cellar, but he now remembers someone there asking him his name and regiment. He says: “When I got into the hospital before I came to this one I can now remember being put against a wall and then being taken into a small room to see the doctor, who gave me a ticket and told me I was suffering from concussion. 1 think I must have gone to sleep after this, as I don’t remember anything else until I was in the train. There a Royal Army Medical Corps bearer brought me a German prisoner to talk to. He was in the Bavarian Guard and had just seen his first action. [Patient is still under treatment.] Comment on these cases seems superfluous. They appear to constitute a definite class among others arising from the effects of shell-shock. The shells in question appear to have burst with con¬ siderable noise, scattering much dust, but this was not attended by the production of odour. It is therefore difficult to understand why hearing should be (practically) unaffected, and the dis¬ sociated “ complex ” be confined to the senses of sight, smell, and taste (and to memory). The close relation of these cases to those of ‘“hysteria” appears fairly certain. I have to thank Captain W. P. S. Branson and Captain H. Pritchard, R.A.M.C., in whose wards these patients were placed, for permission to make these investigations, and Major Gordon Watson, R.A.M.C., Commandant, for permission to publish them. Printed at The Lancet Office, 423 Strand, London, W.C.