Medicine: Psychic Arthritis

To the ever-growing class of mind-made diseases famed Neurologist Stanley Cobb of Harvard last week proposed a new member: arthritis. Although the main cause of arthritis is "an x factor, as yet unknown," Dr. Cobb and his associates-reported in the Journal of the American Medical Association that "poverty, grief and family worry" are intimately connected with the swollen knuckles and aching joint mice of rheumatoid arthritis.

In the Massachusetts General Hospital, 50 arthritis patients were interviewed by a psychiatrist or social worker, who asked them to talk freely of their early lives, family...

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