Medicine: Nervous Nation

Into the high-ceilinged lobby of Manhattan's Hotel Pennsylvania, where the American Psychiatric Association was holding its annual meeting, flew a fat pigeon. Two days and many conferences later, pointedly ignored by hotel guests, the bird still perched or flapped over the potted palms and the crowded sofas. A pressroom aide explained: "Everyone was afraid to mention the pigeon in the lobby, with all these psychiatrists around."

The psychiatrists themselves had more solemn problems on their minds. Their profession, they thought, was facing a task even graver than its job in wartime. Said famed...

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