A stretcher-bearer, 44, eleven years in the service and two months on French service, was seen by Lt. Col. Myers eight days after reporting sick and admission to a base hospital.
While he was under cover in a cellar, three days before reporting sick, a shell had jammed the door and the fumes came in. Later in the day, in another cellar, he had been blown off his seat by a shell and six other men had been laid out. The shelling continued that day and two following days. He had worked on the wounded without any rest.
On lying down he found his left arm numb and cold. The numbness then spread to the legs, especially to the left leg. There was continual tingling in terminal joints of fingers of left hand; hypalgesia over both forearms and hands, especially on left side; total analgesia over left dorsum.
Two days later, the patient could feel articles and reported that the numbness occurred only in the early morning and was followed by a tingling as the numbness passed off. On the same day, the hands and forearms showed a total loss of sensibility to pain, except for a small area on the flexor surface below the elbow joint.
Re spread of anesthesia and alternation of sensory symptoms in this case. Babinski, of course, believes, that the majority of these conditions are the product of medical suggestion, but Babinski meets any critique by pointing out that any other sort of suggestion may produce such results. The heterosuggestion need not be medical. Thus, the sight of a comrade with paralysis or anesthesia, organic or hysterical, may suggest such to the soldier. Léri remarks that these may also be produced by autosuggestion alone. “From a tired feeling in a limb to a loss of power in it, there is but a small step. Another step leads to paralysis and anesthesia. The neuropathic temperament takes these small steps in perfectly good faith.” Léri has found no case in which he could exclude the influence of auto- or heterosuggestion.
Shell-shock; burial; somnambulistic state: Amnesia. Recovery of memory in hypnosis.
Case 361. (Myers, February, 1915.)
A healthy-looking man, with flushed face and large dark eyes with wide pupils, complained of pains in abdomen, back, and limbs, chiefly in knees and ankles, and of visual impairment. This corporal said that his sight had been very indistinct since he was buried, and that if he looked at an electric light, he could see nothing for five minutes afterwards. He was admitted to the Duchess of Westminster’s War Hospital at Touquet, December 11, 1914, having been buried for 48 hours, December 8, when a shell blew in the trench where he lay. He said he could remember nothing until he found himself in a dressing station, lying on straw, in a barn. He was at that time unable to see and fell over something when he tried to walk.
He had gone out August 13, and had been in the last two days at Mons and then at La Bassée. He had slept badly and had taken a good deal of whiskey. He had led a fast life and had had domestic worries recently.