Shell-shock and other neuropsychiatric problems presented in five hundred and eighty-nine case histories from the War literature, 1914-1918 / by E.E. Southard ; with a bibliography by Norman Fenton ; and an introduction by Charles K. Mills.

  • Elmer Ernest Southard
Date:
1919
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Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Shell-shock and other neuropsychiatric problems presented in five hundred and eighty-nine case histories from the War literature, 1914-1918 / by E.E. Southard ; with a bibliography by Norman Fenton ; and an introduction by Charles K. Mills. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    Neurosyphilis, on which Dr. Southard and Dr. Solomon have already given us a valuable treatise, the pharmacopsychoses, especially alcoholism, and the somatopsychoses covering fevers like typhoid and paratyphoid, are considered in numerous care- fully chosen case reports. The reader needs only to look closely into the case records of the first quarter of the volume to get a knowledge of the affections chiefly predisposing the soldier or civilian to functional and reflex nervous diseases. To those familiar with the medical history of the war it is well known that one of the reasons for the efficiency of the American Ex- peditionary Force resided in the fact that the preliminary examinations of the recruits received the fullest attention not only from the points of view of acquired and inherited disease, but also from those of special psychiatric and even psychological deficiencies. Our country, however, had for its guidance the experience of nations which were fighting for three years before we entered the arena and in addition had a large surplus of material from which to cull out the weaklings. Among the predispositional affections considered — besides syphilis, alcohol, and other drug habits, and the somatopsychoses —are the feeble-mindednesses or hypophrenoses, the epilepsies, the psychoses due to focal brain lesions, the presenile and senile disorders, the schizophrenoses including dementia precox and allied affections, the cyclothymoses like manic depressive insan- ity, the psychoneuroses, and the psychopathoses. The last two subjects indicated, considered in special chapters, seem to some extent to be receptacles for affections which cannot well be otherwise placed, — hallucinoses, hysteria, neurasthenia, and psy- chasthenia, — and under the psychopathoses, pathological lying, Bolshevism, delinquencies of various sorts, homosexuality, suicide and self-mutilation, nosophobia, and even claustrophobia with its exemplar who preferred exposure to shell-fire to remaining in a tunnel. Under the encephalopsychoses are found interesting illustra- tions of focal lesions and the general effects of infection and
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