Amnesia, monosymptomatic. Progressive recovery.
Case 354. (Mallet, January, 1917.)
An infantryman, 36, arrived without information at a psychiatric center, March 15, 1916, looking confused and knowing little more than his name, believing himself in a distant town. The disorientation lasted to March 21, on which day the man recognized the doctor as such, knew that he was at a hospital, but felt that he had just left home and wife. From this time on, he began to pick up his surroundings, evidently not knowing that there was a war or that he was a soldier. He did not recognize one of his own company. It was not until March 31 that the first memory of the war reappeared, namely, a memory of the call to the colors, drums, bells, and crowds. April 11 he recollected that he was a soldier and that his wife was in the country, where he had left her on the eleventh day of the mobilization. In the next few days, memories came back bit by bit. He had been at first a little thin and showed a slight fever, oliguria, and poor digestion. All these symptoms now lapsed, and the man became apparently perfectly well.
Such states, according to Mallet, are relatively frequent in soldiers, both in epilepsy, and in infectious deliria,—more than in the deliria of exhaustion.