Mind-&-Body Ills

Every autopsy performed at St. Elizabeth's Hospital, Washington, where most of the patients are mentally deranged, added evidence to Dr. Walter Freeman's theory: that certain types of personalities are particularly susceptible to certain diseases. Dr. Freeman, 35, is professor of neurology at George Washington University Medical School and associate professor of gross pathology at Georgetown University School of Medicine and director of St. Elizabeth's pathological laboratory. He recently studied 1,400 post mortem examinations and found:

Schizoid types: physically pale, sharp-featured; mentally censorious, nonsocial, preferring routine habits, tending to have their personalities split (schizophrenia); especially apt to be tubercular.

Paranoid types: mentally moody, truculent, quarrelsome, suspicious, tending to have systematic delusions (often of grandeur) but without other symptoms of derangement (paranoia); seldom tuberculosis, often cancer.

Cycloid types: active, rubicund, round-faced; mentally jovial, sociable, tending to a maniac-depressive psychosis (cyclothymia) ; disease of the heart, blood vessels, kidneys.

Epileptoid types: tending to have epileptic convulsions, hysterical fits, sudden bursts of temper, head aches (migraine); diseases of the brain itself and of the ductless glands, rarely cancer.

It seems to Dr. Freeman that those people who are susceptible to the same mental upsets are susceptible to the same companionate bacterial or chemical griefs. The more certain this theory becomes, the closer it grows (after more post mortem studies) to a medical law, the better doctors can prognosticate and prevent disease.

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