After a number of weeks he became able to walk.
Arabian fever.
Case 460. (Roussy, April, 1915.)
An Arab fell on his knee, one day in the trenches. A contracture of the left arm, with great pain, and a temperature of 38 to 40 degrees, with hemoptysis, developed. This man had been considered tuberculous. One day, however, the thermometer went up to 41 degrees. It was discovered that he took artificial means to push the mercury up, and that the spitting of blood was voluntary. All these phenomena disappeared after he was put in the guardhouse for 24 hours.
Shrapnel scratch of head: Hysterical amaurosis “?” On isolation in a dark room, the patient began to see light!
Case 461. (Briand and Kalt, February, 1917.)
A man may seek to exaggerate an anomaly of his eye which had existed before the war, in order to live comfortably far from the front.
A soldier sustained a slight scratch from a shrapnel bullet in front of the left ear, which scarred over in a few days. The soldier said, however, that the bullet had gone through his skull and a few hours after his wound said he could not see. Sent to the hospital he continued to say he was blind and finally brought up in an asylum for the blind near Lyons where he was taught to cane chairs and to write in Braille. This happened in July, 1915.
In October he was sent to the Hospital at Quinze-Vingt where a diagnosis of hysterical amaurosis was made with a large interrogation point. He was then sent to Brequet where there was a section reserved for disciplinary cases and very nervous cases not wanting to get well, a service under the charge of Roubinowitch.