Shell-shock by windage: Hysterical paraplegia, flaccid type, develops 10 days later, after strain, capture, privation, recapture. Paraplegia at first complete. Recovery by suggestion (one séance).
A corporal, 21, told how at Goselmind, during the Sarrebourg retreat, August 20, 1914, a shell burst a meter behind him, flattening his knapsack, throwing him to the ground, blowing him forward (as he said, by the pressure of the air) seven or eight meters, leaving him stunned though conscious for about twenty minutes. Uhlans fell upon him but did not trouble themselves further with him as he could not walk. He crawled along on elbows and knees about a kilometer and a half to some Frenchmen in a wood. He now found himself able to walk a whole day supported by two comrades, making about 12 kilometers. He got by carriage to Gerbéviller, but here fell again into the hands of Germans, who left him nine days in the corner of a barn without care. Gerbéviller was retaken, and he was evacuated to Bayon.
He had now had for some time pains in the kidney region below the point struck, some difficulty in turning his head, and some numbness and jerkings in the legs; and the legs that had carried him 14 kilometers were unable to move at all, even in bed. It was only 8 days later that he could perform the slightest movement, and two months followed before he could go a few steps on crutches. December 14, three months and a half after his accident,—he was demonstrated as “spinal contusion.” Upon examination, however, there were no reflex disorders, no sensory disorders, and the muscular weakness was equal in all parts of the lower extremities and trunk. On crutches, he lunged the trunk forward, painfully dragging his legs one after the other, the right foot in external rotation, never passing the left foot, toes scraping ground,—a functional flaccid paraplegia, completely dissolved by suggestion at a single sitting.