Case 300. (Dupuoy, October, 1915.)
Project Gutenberg EPUB3 edition
Southard, Elmer Ernest
A nineteen year old soldier, for some months a bit distressed and irritable, had a dispute with an old man whose jug he unluckily happened to smash. The old man said something was going to happen to him for that. That day, in point of fact, he fell and sustained an injury with water on the right knee. He was upbraided by the captain and evacuated to the ambulance. The fellow thought the old man with the broken jug had interfered, dreamed of the old man’s threats, and felt his hand on his shoulder.
Next day hemichorea developed on the right side, a partial and rhythmic chorea with jerky, regular contractions, fifty to sixty per minute, affecting synchronously the muscles of the leg, arm, face and tongue.
Dupuoy speaks of the reason for the hysterical “choice” of this disease, since his mother had had a probably organic hemichorea, also on the right side, with which she died at thirty years in a stroke. The boy was at that time thirteen years old and had had a rhythmic chorea six weeks, limited to the extensors of the hand on the forearm, treated in hospital.
This new hemichorea was quickly and completely cured by psychotherapy.