Medicine: Turnabout

Obstetricians, who like to boast that they have never lost a father, had better look out. The British Medical Journal reports that a 27-year-old soldier felt so much sympathy for his pregnant wife that he suffered attacks of pseudopregnancy himself.

Pseudopregnancy is fairly common among women, especially those very anxiousto have children. Usually the abdominal swelling is steady and accompanied by a gain in weight. Sometimes women have a spasmodic abdominal distention. The soldier’s swelling was of the latter type. “On Feb. 13 he had received a letter from home at 8 a.m., and his abdominal distention resulted at 11 a.m. the same day.” He had another attack when he was refused permission to go home for his wife’s confinement. “The circumference of the abdomen was 41 inches.” By using narcotics and suggestion, the doctors reduced his abdomen to 30 inches. “The reduction was maintained at this level for one hour . . . and there after slowly returned to the former level.” Next day suggestion without narcotics brought his abdomen down again. After a visit to his wife the soldier ceased being ‘pregnant.”