Medicine: Catatonic Cats

For hours she sat in her corner, staring silently into space, her pupils dilated, her heart pounding, her breathing labored. She shunned her old friends, refused to eat for days at a time. Occasionally she became agitated or infantile and kittenish. But often she just sat, in a catatonic stupor, brooding and lonely, quiet as a cat.

In fact, she was a cat. She was a typical example of some 200 animals made neurotic by University of Chicago Psychoanalyst Jules H. Masserman in the last three years. His purpose in this scientific cat &...

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