Shell-shock by windage: Hysterical crural monoplegia, of gradual development beginning four days after accident. Recovery by suggestion.
Case 228. (Léri, February, 1915.)
A number of chasseurs were doing the “tortoise-shell” under bombardment, when the last chasseur in the line was blown forward above his comrades by a shell bursting about a meter behind him. He was projected some four or five meters, got up, walked four or five kilometers, found an automobile, and was carried to Nancy. He passed, according to his story, red urine three or four times. He was six days at Nancy, where a slight abrasion of the side was treated. He began to feel heavy in his left leg on the fourth day. At Vendôme, the paralysis got worse, and by November 17 he had apparently a complete paralysis of the left lower extremity, called “spinal contusion.” He walked upon two canes, dragging left leg behind and had to be carried upstairs on a stretcher. The reflexes were normal except that there might have been a very slight excess of the left knee-jerk. There was a slight hypesthesia of the left leg, sharply limited above.
These phenomena were strikingly modified, at a single sitting, by verbal suggestion and faradism, but the man was one of those with mauvaise volonté. He did not want to get well so quickly, so that his complete cure was delayed a while.