FIRST ACTIONS OF WOUNDED SOLDIERS. 167 



new order of things, individual temperament resumes entire con- 

 trol. The phenomena of severely wounded soldiers continuing 

 in action is correctly ascribed to abnormal mental excitement. 

 Analogies are seen in every-day life. Contusions, incisions, and 

 even fractures are sustained during excitement and no immediate 

 impression is carried to the intellect. Yet how keen the suffering 

 experienced under slighter hurts made by the surgeon's scalpel, 

 forceps, or drill, when all is known beforehand! A soldier's life 

 predisposes to intensity in either direction. He will stoically ig- 

 nore or morbidly welcome injury. His mind, first of all, is made 

 up not to notice danger or to be unmanned by wounds. So long 

 as he can keep in action that is, so long as he may personally 

 direct some expenditure of muscular energy his stoical purpose 

 will hold out. As a matter of course, when he changes from a 

 personality to a mere machine, manipulated by higher minds, 

 fighting when told to, and again standing or lying still to receive 

 blows and injuries with no chance to retaliate, he changes from a 

 Stoic to a morbidly sensitive being. Familiar with deep and dis- 

 tressing injuries to others, in hugging the hope that he will be 

 spared the worst, he invites fears for the worst at the moment he 

 receives a blow, and fears strike the mind as soon as the bullet hits 

 the body. This may account for frequent aberrations of conduct 

 that follow ordinary wounds. The bravest may be unmanned by 

 them, and doubtless death-fright actually takes place with gal- 

 lant souls ; or, if neither death nor delirium follow, then extrava- 

 gant notions of pain, and violent wailing over trifles. 



Numberless cases might be cited showing that excellent sol- 

 diers are thrown into sudden mental and physical panic by war 

 wounds, just as civilians are by injuries and surgical operations. 

 Exaggerated sensations of suffering and often quick delirium are 

 reported from the battle-field, such as can not be the direct and 

 necessary sequence of the actual injury, but take rise in the 

 emotions. 



As a rule, reported war cases are confined almost wholly to 

 injuries not necessarily fatal. Fatal ones rarely get on record, 

 because the cool and observant surgeon does not study the symp- 

 toms of the actual field of fighting.* Of those who are struck 

 insensible and subsequently revive and survive, there are known 

 to be many ; but of the number rendered insensible who revive 

 and resume action and then die, there can only be conjecture. In 

 this class must be placed many whose attitudes in death are ab- 

 normal. But taking into account the symptoms of the wounded 

 who have lived to report them, and of the dead whose cases have 



* In the civil war the proportion of deaths to the surviving injured was a tiifle more 

 than one to three. 



