Shell-shock, emotional (slight trauma): Tremors and sensory impairment: Cure by hypnosis, thrice repeated.
Case 535. (Nonne, December, 1915.)
A reservist, always well, not neuropathic (mother had had seizures, possibly epileptic, for many years) was wounded in the left calf by a shell fragment, about the middle of December, 1914. He was at the same time, as a result of the shell explosions near by, afflicted with a tremor of the whole body; this tremor gradually increased and proved refractory to all treatment for nine months.
At the beginning of September, 1915, the patient reached Nonne’s wards, showing tremor of head, arms and legs, with pronounced hypalgesia of the whole body, abolition of frontal and conjunctival reflexes, and contraction of the visual fields.
The tremor of the head was completely removed at the first hypnotic treatment. There was a slight recurrence of this tremor two days later, and traces of it could be observed for nine days. A third hypnotic treatment swept away this tremor, which did not return.
The patient was discharged after about four weeks, suitable for garrison duty.
Re traumatic neurosis, Nonne dislikes this term of Oppenheim, because such a term rather tends to connote unfavorable prognosis. As quoted under Case 530, Nonne holds that the war data show that hysteria is neither a form of degeneration nor an affair built on the Freudian schema.
Nonne in fact maintains that the hysterical syndrome may occasionally occur with much greater ease in a normal person than ever has been known before. It is precisely in these cases of normals getting hysterical that Nonne gets especially good results with hypnosis. If the development of the hysterical syndrome had extended over days or weeks, then the hypnotic cure was a slower one. The above reservist developed his Shell-shock gradually and required three hypnotic treatments. But although the number of doses of hypnotism required may be said roughly to depend upon the time which the condition took to come to a head, yet there is no similar rule re duration. A miracle cure may be brought about even in cases that have lasted over a year. This result, if confirmed, would signify that the hysterical condition once fixated did not especially increase in its tenacity.
Re hypnosis in Germany, it should be noted that Nonne is the chief protagonist for hypnosis, at least among the well-known neurologists. Psychoelectric cures, which the Germans term Kaufmann’s cure, are also greatly in vogue in German clinics. Despite the well-based claims of Lt.-Col. Myers and of Eder, some English observers appear to condemn hypnosis as inadequate, or even as dangerous.
A series of relatively successful cases like those here mentioned might yield a wrong impression of the value of hypnosis (see Feiling’s unsuccessful case 369).