Shell-shock: Deaf-mutism.
A deaf-mute, 24, not of a neurotic temperament or of a neuropathic predisposition, was admitted to the Fourth London General Hospital November 16, 1915.
He wrote, “I left England the 8th of March, and went to Gallipoli on the 26th of May, and about the middle of August, one of our monitors fired short. I felt something go in my head; then I went to the Canada Hospital. They said it was concussion.” He had seen the monitors firing. He came to in a dug-out about an hour afterward. He was quite deaf and his head felt as if it would burst.
He could see and speak a little but lost his speech completely when Barany’s tests were applied. The headache then passed away, leaving the deaf-mutism. The ears, on examination, proved normal. The patient was able to cough and whistle. He wrote his wife a letter, telling her how he killed a Turkish woman sniper, but he did not remember that he had written the letter. Although he said he did not dream, while asleep he would assume the attitude of shooting with a rifle, as if pulling a trigger, and then the attitude of using the bayonet: the right parry, the left parry, and the thrust. Sometimes while asleep he would jump as if a shell were coming, and he would catch his right elbow as if hit there. He would then open his eyes wide and look under the bed. Then he would wake up and begin to cry, but without sound. Just such habitual attitudes occur in soldiers under anesthesia. In hypnotic sleep, although he trembled at his trench experiences, he did not assume these defensive attitudes.
Mott states in his Lettsomian lectures that hearing is often absolutely lost, but that sometimes a man is absolutely deaf on one side alone, either from the ruptured drum or from the violence with which wax has been driven against the drum. Mott speaks of the frequency of auditory hallucinations, and of hyperacusis—part of the patient’s general hypersensitivity—which may increase the violence of the neurosis and especially aggravate the headache.