Mental Changes Following Head Trauma in Children

Mental disease in relation to head injury has engaged the interest of neuropsychiatrists for many years. The first references to this condition in modern literature are found in the writings of Esquirol¹(1837), in France, Prichard²(1837), in the United States, Schlager³(1857), in Austria, and Skae⁴(1866), in Scotland. Since then an extensive literature has appeared, to which von Krafft-Ebing⁵(1868), Hartmann⁶(1884), Guder⁷(1886), Bailey⁸(1903), Meyer⁹(1903), Trömner¹⁰(1910), Berger¹¹(1915), Hadley¹²(1922), Pfeifer¹³(1928), Strauss and Savitsky¹⁴(1934) and Schilder¹⁵(1934) have contributed. At first, the primary problem was nosologic. It was soon recognized that a certain group of these mental changes bore only an indirect relationship to the trauma which acted as a precipitant on a preexisting psychopathic personality, rather than as a direct etiologic agent. These mental conditions were