Shell-shock; slight trauma; windage felt; fall; loss of consciousness; wandering, conscious, over night; shrapnel burst: Spontaneous hypnosis or somnambulism, lasting four days. Return to the corps.
Case 366. (Milian, January, 1915.)
An infantryman, 20, boxer by profession, was brought with other wounded, in the night, to Saint Nicolas Hospital and was seen next morning, August 24, in bed, lying motionless on his back, eyes open, fixed, eyelids not winking. No reply was got to questions. The arm lifted fell back upon the bed, although slowly and not heavily as in apoplexy. There was no catalepsy. The patient was taken from his bed and put upright. In this position he remained immobile, hands at side, head bent forward, eyes fixed on the ground. The eyelids did not move upon approach of the finger or a lighted candle, unless there was a fine beginning of movement. If he was pushed, he made two or three steps forward, with eyes fixed on the ground and head bent forward. The only spontaneous movement was carrying the left hand back to the side as if to take the bayonet. He got into bed alone.
Next day the patient could walk better and began to talk, but preserved the same absorbed attitude. He told, in monotonous voice, of the shells that his squad had received and of the dead that he saw about him. August 27 he woke up and was unable to tell how he had come to the hospital. He told how the regiment had been bombarded for a time and how a shell burst near him; how he got a splinter in the buttock (of which the contusion was still visible); and how he had been thrown down by the windage of the shell. His sack had been torn from his shoulders. He had lost consciousness, he thought, for a short time, anyhow he could not find his regiment. He passed the night near Longuyon and next day looked for his regiment again. Shrapnel burst near him, and from that time forward he had lost memory. August 27, at his express request, he started back for his corps. There was no stigma of degeneration or hysteria.