Mind & Body

In a dark, quiet room the investigators put the patient on his back. They passed a slender tube through one nostril into his stomach, so that a sample of the stomach fluid could be tapped at any time. They talked soothingly to him, urged him to relax and think peaceful thoughts. When he was in a good frame of mind they took a stomach sample. Then they began to talk with him about other things (with the tube through his nostril he could talk well enough)--unpleasant things, things that made him resentful, anxious, angry, frustrated. They continued their calculated tactlessness till his voice and manner showed that he was in a good dither. Then they took another stomach sample. The experience was painful but it served the cause of science.

This experiment was reported last week at a convention of the American Psychological Association and affiliated societies at Pennsylvania State College. It was intended to measure something that psychologists and doctors have long believed and all sufferers knew anyway--that distressing emotions cause increased amounts of hydrochloric acid to be poured out in the stomach, are thus linked to such stomach disorders as "heartburn," dyspepsia, gastric ulcer. The experimenters were Drs. Bela Mittelmann of New York Post-Graduate Hospital and Harold Wolff of Cornell Medical College. Not only did they find that emotion induced increase of stomach acid, but they also measured the increase.

> A 30-year-old man was shocked when a fellow worker dropped dead of a heart attack. He began to have "heartburn" himself. He did not confide his trouble to his wife, and it grew worse. He went to the hospital. When Drs. Mittelmann & Wolff did their experiment on him, his stomach acid rose 167%.

> A 45-year-old man had been ousted from home by his family and jailed for stealing, was living meagrely on Federal relief, his pride had been wounded by a hospital doorman who refused to let him use the visitors' entrance. On airing his tribulations his stomach acid first dropped, then rose, reaching a peak when his anger was manifestly greatest. Bloody shreds and bile were also found in the specimens.

> A 60-year-old man with duodenal ulcer who had married a servant girl was on bad terms with her, was having an affair with another servant. He felt that his standing in the community, once high, was crumbling. When he was tested like the others, his acid flow was quadrupled.

Obvious indication: psychotherapy as well as medical treatment for stomach disorders. Other highlights of the meetings:

Sheltering Arms. Reluctance to accept psychological counsel in hiring workers is not confined to employers, said Psychologist Morris S. Viteles of the University of Pennsylvania. "Labor leaders resist likewise, because they stand for the group protection of its inferior members, which is the tradition of organized labor throughout the world, except perhaps in the Soviet Union. There, under the direction of a so-called proletarian dictatorship, inefficiency is made synonymous with political crime and the trade unions have learned to withdraw from their inferior members the protection still accorded to them by labor unions in capitalistic countries."

Radicals. Though by no means ubiquitous, the phenomenon of the well-heeled radical (viz., Corliss Lament, Herman Shumlin, Lillian Hellman, Dorothy Parker) is occasionally encountered in the U.S.. Professor of Education Goodwin Barbour Watson of Columbia's Teachers College tried to correlate radicalism not only to income but to other factors in the individual's life. Questioning those who expressed radical views among persons seeking vocational guidance, he found no connection with income, sex, unemployment, personal wellbeing. But he did find that the average radical is likely to be young, intelligent, well-educated, nonreligious. Only 7% of the Catholics he questioned acknowledged radicalism; 47% of agnostics did.

Prisoners. Psychologist Maurice L. Farber of Iowa Child Welfare Research Station probed--after much tactful ingratiation--the sources of mental suffering among adult jailbirds. He found prisoners most disturbed by uncertainty as to the exact day of release--an unsugared pill for penologists who recommend indefinite sentences. One told him: "I'd prefer being told I'd do a definite amount of time, even if it were ten years." But Dr. Farber found the greatest anguish caused by a conviction that the sentences were too severe. "There appears to exist," he said, "in the mind of the prisoner a simple calculus of punishment. If he pays too much, then society owes him something. A feeling which might be called 'anti-guilt' develops, so that he can commit a new crime and still, in his own mind, have done no wrong."

Economy. Professor Herbert A. Toops of Ohio State University was credited by a colleague with an idea applying the principle of the conditioned reflex to electrified cattle fences. After repeated shocks, cattle learn to keep away from the fence entirely and the current can be turned off to save money. One vicious old bull had such a fine reflex that it kept warily to the almost precise geometric centre of the pasture. If the reflexes show signs of deterioration, they can be renewed from time to time by a few hours of electrification.

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