Medicine: Mother, Father & Ulcer

Peptic ulcers are about four times as common among men as among women—nobody knows why.*Three University of Cincinnati psychiatrists decided that women ulcer patients were not getting enough attention, and set out to study what might have made a representative group of them sick.

The results were surprising. Of 25 patients, aged 10 to 66, the investigators found that almost every one had been left motherless, or had been rejected or neglected by her mother. Every one had become unhealthily dependent on her father, husband or lover. Some overcompensated for their dependence by...

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