One-Two Punch

The patient was a middle-aged factory worker who got fed up with his job and his fellow workers. One day he suddenly blew up and was dragged away, struggling, to a hospital. There he quickly developed total amnesia; he could not even recognize his wife. A month later, still in a mental fog, he was examined by Boston's Psychiatrist Abraham Myerson,

Dr. Myerson decided to try a simple prescription: he gave the patient a mild dose of a soothing drug (sodium amytal) to lower his inhibitions and make him talk, combined with a stimulant (Benzedrine) to keep him awake. Then he closeted the patient in a room with the patient's wife. When the doctor looked in again, some 45 minutes later, the patient was chattering like a machine gun. The doctor asked: "Do you recognize this woman?" "Certainly," snapped the patient, "she's my wife." A cure had been worked without psychotherapy.

Last week Dr. Myerson, director of research at Boston State Hospital, reported in the New England Journal of Medicine that his dramatic experiment had worked well in other cases, seemed to be just right for uncomplicated types of hysterical amnesia.* The combination of a narcotic and a stimulant, he said, appears to be ideal for increasing "communication."

*In East Orange, N.J., Dr. Myerson's soothing drug treatment got partial support last week. An amnesia victim, a wandering farm hand who had been taken to a hospital, was treated with a dose of sodium pen to thai (a barbiturate similar to sodium amytal) and promptly recovered his memory.

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