He came to the Lemioux Custodial Institution, July 12, 1915. His brother, 15, was a voyou; his sister, 16, was an imbecile. The patient told about his military history and how he had shot himself in the left hand, to be with a certain woman, how attempts had been made to poison him, especially a certain man in Bordeaux, who wanted to possess the woman in the case. In point of fact, the physicians could not save him from this enemy.
The patient now became calm and indifferent, lived secluded and almost immobile. In November, however, he began to sit down and eat like others, making low, timorous answers, vague and confused. He smiled cheerfully on questioning, but had many sad ideas. He would smilingly say that he was going to die soon.
Re schizophrenia in the French army, Boucherot found eight cases amongst 107 soldiers admitted to Loiret in the first year of the war. He remarks upon the fact that the schizophrenic cases were often disciplinary. The group is a disciplinary group. Damaye remarks upon the difficulty of diagnosis betwixt feeblemindedness and dementia praecox as observed in the French army.
Volunteer: Dementia praecox.
Case 154. (Haury, 1915.)
N. enlisted voluntarily for three years in the Infantry, September 10, 1912, and immediately gave indications of abnormal mentality by his conduct. He made mistakes all day long. At reveille he had to be called several times, and when his corporal objected, he said, “It is cold; I don’t see why I must get up; I am free to remain in bed until 8 o’clock.” In reply to his corporal’s remonstrance about his continued latenesses, he once said, “I can’t get ready; I have no mirror to wash before.” This was rather surprising conduct from an intelligent printer-engraver, who had lived and gone to school in the town of Lyons. He was unable to make his own bed or to perform the simplest of exercises in the manual of arms. He was violent on several occasions, once attacking a comrade who had given him an order, and again when another had taken his place in the line. His reasoning faculties were those of a young child. He continued doing these strange things, and was finally discharged.
Re dementia praecox amongst American troops, Edgar King, before the war, concluded that some 5 to 8 per cent of the American cases of mental disease in the army belonged to the paranoid form of dementia praecox. King lays special emphasis upon dementia praecox, finding that more than one-half of the army admissions for mental disease belong to this group. He calls attention to the number of desertions and undesirables in the group. He found that 70 per cent of the cases showed some heredity.
Hysteria versus catatonia.