Daze with relapses; mutism—following shell fire and corpse work.
Case 356. (Mann, June, 1915.)
A soldier lost his voice apparently from two factors: shell fire and the emotional shock of helping to fill the big common graves. The man could never tell for certain (retrograde amnesia) whether he went from corpses to shell fire or from shell fire to corpses.
Several weeks of daze followed in which he hardly reacted to outward stimuli, but occasionally said “It smells!” “Leave me still!”
He recovered gradually from the daze. But merely hinting at his experiences, especially the smells, sufficed to throw him into another daze.
The loss of voice lasted for some time after he had wholly stopped lapsing into the dazed states.
There was some alcohol in the previous history of this case, which is the only case among twenty-three Shell-shock cases reported by Mann which had a psychiatric disorder of any lasting nature due to shell fire.
Re mutism and the two factors of shell fire and emotion spoken of by Mann, compare the views of Babinski to the effect that emotion alone is unable to cause such a hysterical manifestation as mutism.
Re the corpse work, see remarks under Case 342.