WAR SHOCK.

Colonist, Volume LXI, Issue 15047, 15 April 1919, Page 3

WAR SHOCK.

A STRANGE" DISEASE

PUZZLING THE DOCTORS

• THE STRAIN OF ACTION

,The men of science have 'various explanations for that strange condition ■which the man on the street, picturing "a cringing, fearful wreck of a soldier, calls * 'shell' shock," writes Joshua Shandeling 5n an American paper. Army doctors Of .tall the Powers have;agreed that "shell shock" is not the proper term. American dbctors found that it developed in peaceful-training camps in which the sound of big guns never hadbeen heard; they found stricken men behind the lines in JFrance, out of earshot of the front.

"War shock" is a better phrase, phyenologists and physicians say. Few per-" sons have not, at some time in their lives, felt a momentary loss of speech, or a paralysis, or a fit of ' -uncontrollable trembling—the result of a great fear., Men and women lie helpless, speechless, '- unable to move, while burglars-move through their rooms. A, person sees a street car moving down on a little boy,' j and is paralysed into inaction. A mother stands by, helpless through terror, while pa. mad-bull pursues her little daughter. DISEASE HAS PERMANENCY, War shoek —" or shelly shock—is the i'same thing, scientists have explained,l except in this: The paralysis, or the , dumbness of a moment of terror, is temi porary, and war shock is more or less

permanent. A^soldier succumbs to war shock—in any ,of its hundred forms — when he is mentally incapable of 'adjusting himself to the conditions and .hardships of his new life. The break-down , may come in a training camp, or it may ;come, after a long period of weakening and mental distress, in the crisis of.a battle. Phsychoiogists—most of them, at any rate—have decided that the nervously normal man is not likely to suffer shell shock. Ifc is the man with the al> normal or subnormal nervous development that is stickcn. And it has been decided that war shock is a'thing'that is concerned with neither fear nor intelligence ; the brilliant man is as likely so suffer as tho stupid, and the fearless man is as likely to bo made Helpless ks the coward.1

"DISEASE UNKNOWN TO "PATS." It is said that no soldier in the famous Princess Pats has ever , had- "shell shock." „ Officers of the regiment told their men there was no such thing, and the men believed it and didn't "catchi" it- The man on the street pictures ft shell shock" patient as a quaking',, trembling, stuttering man that jumps mi sci' earas at every unexpected noise. Ihafc-is only one of the manifestations of war shock. Early in 1918, a lieutenant in command of an ambulance company m prance temporarily went out of his head. He dressed a German prisoner m his own uniform and put on the -uniform of a German officer and started for the enemy lines. The' French, with whom his company was serving, stopped him. He was sent to a hospital for observation. There his hands began to twist and weave eternally, and his head began to shake incessantly, he began to stammer, he walked imperfectly, he lost his sense of distances. . ■

"■■'. DOCTORS ARE PUZZLED. Two Army doctors were puzzled. One drew the^other aside and said: '-There's nothing the matter with this man. He s sot hurt: A spinal injury might affect r toil this .way, but he has no hurt." Tiie hemtenant overheard him. -Six months later his condition had noil been improved. His fingers opened and closed -■continually. He stammered. One day he became confidential with a soldier in the psychological laboratory of an army hospital: ■ "I mustn't get well," he said. .'The doctors think I am faking. If 1 am cured they will ■court-martial me .and shoot me." And when he had been talked out of that "illusion he began to recover rapidly. The writer lias seen shell-shocked" soldiers, absoltitely uninjured organically, lie for months, "total-1 ly paralysed, in an army hospital. That was war shock. J

PARALYSIS WAS TEMPORARY. He has seen men that thought their legs '.; were injured—unwounded men— j walk normally after they had been convinced by trials that nothing was wrong with them. War shock had left a temporary paralysis that disappeared later. He has seen men with sound vocal organs stand spechless in an aphasia produced by war shock. He has seen the manifestations of war shock in an infinite variety of combinations. French, Canadian, and English doctors were well launched into the study of war shock,' when the United States went to j war. They have treated the condition by suggestion, by hypnotism, and by various methods based on the theory of counter-shock. They have tried absolute rest and they have tried exercises. They have tried to treat the condition in the bedlam of the battle field and in the rest camps of Southern France and England. DOCTOR USES SUGGESTION. One British medical officer, using suggestion afone, has reported remarkable results. He would treat.'a man made, deaf by war shock like this: ''What's the matter "with you?" he would write. "I can't hear," the patient would reply. "Well, we're going to fix that. I am going to apply a little electricity to your ears; then you will hear all right." The patient would grin in an "I hope-i you're-right-but-1-doubt-it'' sort of way." Then the physician applied a little electricity—about enough to make a fly ticklish—and shouted through ffie speaking tube into the man's ear. 'Tin glad you j can hear again,?' he would say, and the light of joy in the soldier's face would show he had guessed correctly It is! recognised that pessimistic, hopeless 1 patients—whether war shook has distorted their minds or left them dumb or paralysed their arms —are hard to cure. It is recognised /also that the rules of treatment cannot be applied to every case. In the early days of the war the" British army is said to have tried by court-martial ihen' found paralysed or dumb or otherwise stricken- -Ehe doctors could find no organic trouble,'ana held that the men were malingering. But science, in a study that virtually is only in infancy, has abandoned the old I cry of "fake!" and has recognised in a j war-shocked patient an unfortunate j man that could not stand the gaff of war. v .