Читать книгу Shell-Shock and Other Neuropsychiatric Problems - Elmer Ernest Southard - Страница 119

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Hysterical versus thalamic hemianesthesia.

Case 114. (Léri, October, 1916.)

A soldier, 40, had been suffering for a number of months with pains in the left side of the trunk and feelings of weakness in the left arm and leg. In the summer of 1915 he was on leave and while walking, fell, lay down, and found he could hardly move his left arm and leg. Two or three weeks later he got up, walking with a stick. After some time in hospital, he was sent back to the trenches, a little weak.

He had shortly, however, to be examined neurologically again. He could hardly raise the left leg and his passive resistance was poor on this side. The left side was almost completely anesthetic to all forms of stimulus, although an intense faradic current yielded a feeling like that of a fly. Nor was the tactile sensation absolutely nil, as it could be got with a flat finger on the upper arm and thigh. Cold and heat sensations not well localized. The hemianesthesia was sharply limited at the median line and affected the buccal, lingual and nasal mucosa. Deep sensibility was almost abolished on the left side. Stereognostic sense was lost and the sense of position was lost absolutely for hand and foot.

The patient said that he heard less well on the left side. There was also a slight contraction of the left visual field. The reflexes were lively, but equal on both sides. A diagnosis of hysterical hemianesthesia was apparently called for, but psychoelectric treatment failed. The plantar reflex was, in fact, completely absent on the left side, as well as the corneal reflex. The faradic current failed to produce as marked a dilatation of the pupil on the left side as on the right. The forehead wrinkles were less marked on the left side. The mouth deviated slightly to the right. The left nasolabial fold was a little less marked. The tongue did not deviate, but was a little narrow on the left side. The palate deviated a little to the left. The left side of the trunk seemed a little less developed than the right, and the scapula stuck a little less closely to the body on the left side, when the arms were raised. The left buttock was a little narrower than the right and the left gluteal fold was less marked. In combined flexion of thigh and trunk the left foot readily left the floor. There was a left-sided hypotonia in forced flexion of the forearm. There were no tremors of the limbs in repose, except a few contractions of the left lower extremity. In movement, however, there was a marked tremor and in coördination the finger to nose test could not be performed. Speech was slow and hesitant, sometimes stuttering. Food was sometimes taken into the air passages. Headaches were localized on the right side. They had begun when the first symptoms began. There was mental disorder, with gaps in memory. In short, the case is probably one of thalamic disease, though there were no pains except a few in the left side of the trunk at the beginning of the disease. The diagnosis of hysteria was at first made in this case, but the rule that hysterical hemianesthesia is never found without auto- or hetero-suggestion caused the alteration of diagnosis to thalamic.

Shell-Shock and Other Neuropsychiatric Problems

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