Note 69 — Chapter IV · Some General Considerations.

This was seen repeatedly in the treatment of the relatively uneducated soldiers who had become slightly neurasthenic as a result of the war, especially of those whose life had been spent in open-air manual work, or in the strict and healthy routine of the regular army. They complained of emotional irritability, minor lapses of memory such as the forgetting of relatively unimportant names or of errands, disturbed sleep, soon “getting fed up” with their amusements (e.g., “jig-saws,” or billiards for hours every day, month after month in a converted schoolroom or outhouse!). Not only did these phenomena disturb them, but in a great many cases they seemed to prove to these unfortunate men that they were insane, or rapidly becoming so. They would anxiously ask such questions as, “What is it that makes me so irritable at a slight noise, or at being brushed against by another patient? I used not to be like that.” Their conduct was also regarded as unusual by their companions. Now would not the head of a business firm, an over-worked medical man, a university professor or an army officer in a position of responsibility, confidently expect to be allowed ex-officio a certain number of these eccentricities without being called “diseased?” But let him drop the privileges and shelter of his rank, live for a few weeks as a private in a barracks with a number of high-spirited and thoroughly healthy soldiers and his behaviour might certainly be considered by them to be queer, if nothing worse.