Shell-shock and other neuropsychiatric problems

Chapter 323: Case 298. (Schuster, December, 1914.)

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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.

Bareback riding: Spasmodic neurosis (similar ANTEBELLUM episode).

Case 298. (Schuster, December, 1914.)

A soldier, 32, had to do a long stretch of riding bareback. As a result, he later suffered from tonic muscular spasms whenever he had to exert himself seriously, especially whenever he had to move his legs and when sudden movements or sudden strong contacts were made. The attack appeared to be reflexly dependent on the pain. The case is regarded as one of the Wernicke Crampusneurosen, a disease somewhat related with hysteria.

A condition somewhat like the one developed in the war had occurred in this man at the age of seventeen after a drenching, but the attack was at that time much milder. He had, however, frequently had cramps in his legs.