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 origin”; she cries only when hungry or angry. It is a rare condition (first described ten years ago by Johns Hopkins Neurologist Frank R. Ford), probably due to a defect in the central nervous system. No cure is known. Last week Beverly’s mother, Mrs. Victor Smith, wife of a Firestone employee, took the baby home with a lot of advice from the doctors. She must watch Beverly constantly: the baby might break a bone and continue using it until it could not be set properly; she might develop appendicitis without nature’s usual warning of pain. Spanking her to make her more careful about hot stoves and knives would do no good; she wouldn’t feel it. A life without pain will be a perpetually dangerous life for Beverly.