Medicine: Painless

Some babies "never cry." In this case, it was almost literally true. Beverly Smith didn't cry when she fell down; she never cried when she bumped her head. She didn't even cry when she burned her hand on a hot stove.

When she was a year old, anemic Beverly was taken to Akron's Children's Hospital. A deep injection of liver extract for anemia is painful, and babies usually howl vigorously when they get one—but not Beverly; she didn't even whimper. Hospital doctors examined her more closely. They decided that she really is a "painless" baby suffering from "indifference to injury, of congenital...

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