Shot himself in hand. Delusions.
Case 153. (Rouge, 1915.)
An infantryman, 26, left for the front August, 1914, was slightly wounded, recovered, went back to the front, and then is said, in March, 1915, to have shot himself in the hand. When up for military review a delusional state set in. It seems that he had been interned in several hospitals for examination, but escaped four or five times because physicians wanted to poison him and had partially succeeded.
He came to the Lemioux Custodial Institution, July 12, 1915. His brother, 15, was a voyou; his sister, 16, was an imbecile. The patient told about his military history and how he had shot himself in the left hand, to be with a certain woman, how attempts had been made to poison him, especially a certain man in Bordeaux, who wanted to possess the woman in the case. In point of fact, the physicians could not save him from this enemy.
The patient now became calm and indifferent, lived secluded and almost immobile. In November, however, he began to sit down and eat like others, making low, timorous answers, vague and confused. He smiled cheerfully on questioning, but had many sad ideas. He would smilingly say that he was going to die soon.
Re schizophrenia in the French army, Boucherot found eight cases amongst 107 soldiers admitted to Loiret in the first year of the war. He remarks upon the fact that the schizophrenic cases were often disciplinary. The group is a disciplinary group. Damaye remarks upon the difficulty of diagnosis betwixt feeblemindedness and dementia praecox as observed in the French army.