Medicine: Food & Nerves

Cried Augustus, in Slovenly Peter: “I will not, will not eat my soup”—and gradually wasted away to death. Augustus, it now appears, was a psychoneurotic case. In the current Journal of Abnormal and Social Psychology, Lieut. Richard Wallen, U.S.N.R., tells of his Augustan researches at the Marine base at Parris Island, S.C. He asked groups of normal servicemen and groups of neurotics about to be discharged which foods they disliked, which ones they would actually refuse to eat. His discovery: while the normal men declared themselves willing to eat even the foods they disliked, the neurotics recoiled with tight-clamped jaws from such things as “quivering” gelatin, “slimy” oysters, oatmeal (“It reminds me of vomit”).