Case 530. (Nonne, December, 1915.)
An infantryman, without special hereditary taint and previously well, was shot September, 1914, in the right forearm. A paralysis of the hand and fingers persisted after the wound had healed. Several reserve hospitals failed to cure the paralysis.
Eight months after the injury he arrived at Nonne’s clinic at Eppendorf, with a flexor contracture of the right wrist joint as well as of the fingers (exclusive of thumb). The finger tips were deeply sunk in the flesh of the palm. Extension could only be brought about against strong resistance. There was a total anesthesia for all sensations in the hand and fingers. No contraction of visual fields.
The patient, upon suggestion, fell immediately into hypnosis. At first the contracture was released with some difficulty; then, with greater ease, and then without any resistance whatever. During the same hypnotic séance the patient finally became able to extend actively both fingers and wrist; and next day, after the patient had convinced himself of his cure, he was able voluntarily to stretch the hand and fingers with normal amplitude and power. The disturbance of sensibility had spontaneously disappeared.
This cure was, from the patient’s point of view, indecently quick. He said everybody must feel he was a malingerer, and in fact he felt so himself. He went back into service, where he had been for several months at the date of Nonne’s report.
Re Nonne’s enthusiasm for hypnosis, see under [Case 526]. Nonne, contrary to Babinski and Froment, would regard even the severe and obstinate vasomotor disturbances as purely functional and as not even “sub-organic.” The basis of this belief is that hypnosis cures these phenomena as well as various tics and pertinacious tremors. French observers consider that these tics and tremors may even be organic in their nature, basing their ideas upon the non-success of suggestion. (It may be noted [see under [Case 528]] that the French military authorities do not allow the use of hypnotism in the army.) With respect to the present case ([530]), of course, the French observers would not deny the power of hypnotism to produce the cure. Babinski and Froment’s Postscript to the English edition of their work on hysteria, remarks that, though Roussy and Lhermitte state that vasomotor symptoms may disappear along with the psychotherapeutic cure of paralyses and contractures, yet Roussy and Boisseau later admitted that improvement in thermal and vasomotor control is at best an exceedingly slow one.
More recent personal communications indicate that there is still room for some question as to the curability by suggestion of such disorders as tic, tremor, vasomotor imbalance, and the like. In short, the true scope of the “pithiatic” or suggestion-curable diseases is still somewhat a matter of controversy.
Shell-shock: “Doll’s head” anesthesia, mutism: Hypnosis.