Medicine: Cuckoo, Jug-Jug

One day in Chicago last week the thermometer registered a balmy 62°. That cut no ice with Bioclimatician William Ferdinand Petersen, Chicago pathologist. For 25 years he has been studying the medical fata morgana of the decisive effects of weather and sunspots on human beings. His latest book about them: Man—Weather and Sun. He is definitely against spring (TIME, March 25, 1946). This week he broke out again in his annual rash of anti-spring fever: United Press and This Week carried thunderhead interviews.

More people, said Petersen, kill themselves, go insane or die of natural causes during April, May and June than at any other time of year. Spring fever is no laughing matter, says Anti-Vernalist Petersen: the human frame, drained of energy and vitamins during the winter, is a pushover for physical and mental ailments. He did not prescribe sulphur & molasses, but to his faithful he offered a further seasonal sentiment: a majority of the world’s criminals, and most of its geniuses, were conceived in the spring. Dr. Petersen, 61, was born in March.