Shell-shock and other neuropsychiatric problems

Chapter 300: Case 275. (Babinski and Froment, 1917.)

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About This Book

The work assembles nearly six hundred clinical case histories drawn from wartime medical literature to document combat-related neuropsychiatric disorders. It presents concise case protocols illustrating varied symptom patterns, diagnostic dilemmas, malingering and simulation, therapeutic interventions, and treatment outcomes, and includes bibliographic references and introductory commentary. Sections juxtapose cases to illuminate contested diagnoses and to inform postwar rehabilitation and mental-hygiene efforts, aiming to provide clinicians and reconstruction workers with detailed clinical material for recognizing, classifying, and managing neuropsychiatric consequences of war.

Bullet wound of ankle: Contracture effect of chloroform.

Case 275. (Babinski and Froment, 1917.)

A man was wounded, September 1, 1914, by a bullet in the left ankle. Contracture of the foot and of the four outer toes in extension followed, with a flaccid paralysis of the great toe. The left knee-jerk was a little stronger than the right; the left Achilles jerk also appeared weaker but observation was difficult on account of contracture of the foot.

Chloroformed, October 22, 1915: There was no sharply defined asymmetry of the tendon reflexes. The left Achilles reflex appeared a little weaker. In the phase of muscular resolution, the contracture disappeared entirely, but it reappeared a little after the return of the tendon reflexes. The reappearance of the contracture preceded the reappearance of consciousness from twenty to twenty-five minutes.