Medicine: Tongue Unbridled

Donald Larue Campbell, 30, handsome Columbus, Ohio truck driver, began talking a fortnight ago. By last week he had talked himself into the headlines of the country and seemed well on the way to talking himself to death.

When Truck Driver Campbell first became loquacious, Lena, his blonde, 26-year-old wife, was astonished. He had been a quiet, moody fellow all the eight years they were married. Lately he had begun to worry because of trouble with other Columbus truck drivers. Maybe, she thought, the time last year he bumped his head while unloading butter had something to do with his sudden talkativeness. She took him up to his parents’ home at rustic little Edison a few miles north of Columbus.

At his parents’, Donald Campbell threw off restraints and let his tongue run wild. On and on he talked, day and night, day after day, without rhyme or reason. From bed to sofa he rambled. The family pulled down the shades to shield him from the neighbors. The folks tried to catch some sense from what he chattered. His voice became shrill, raspy, hurried. “Cigarets should never be taxed in Ohio,” ran his monolog. “When I was a boy, Joe and I used to goswimming together. Now he thinks cigarets should be taxed. . . . Sometimes I believe that Joe doesn’t realize how hard it is to be a truck driver in Columbus. But I’m not getting any better. . . . The radio seemed nice last night although truck driving wasn’t mentioned. We will take the whole thing up when we get home, but I’m not getting any better, do you think? . . .”

Mrs. Campbell: No.

Campbell: I’m not getting any better. . . . I’m not getting better. . . .

He would take two hours to eat a meal. And with no logic at all would he shriek, sob, laugh.

When he snickeringly told smutty stories, Mrs. Campbell put ice packs on his head, to no avail, and sent their only child, Doris June, 7, to her maternal grandparents, farmers near Columbus.

Eventually frightened, Lena Campbell called in Dr. Charles Salo Jackson who has been practicing around Edison the past 20 years. “Strangest case I’ve ever seen,” said Dr. Jackson. He advised asking Dr. Harding to take a look at the case.

Dr. George Tryon Harding III, nephew of the 29th President of the U. S., is an able neuropsychiatrist practicing in Columbus. At Edison Dr. Harding peered into Donald Campbell’s eyes and throat, tickled his soles and tapped his knees, drew some liquid from his spine, made laboratory tests.

After consultation the physicians, sympathetic with mid-Ohio’s mores, decided that the most kindly thing was to call the affliction a chronic meningoencephalitis. That meant an inflammation of the brain and its membranous envelope. The man’s loquacity was the outward manifestation of a brain unhitched and running wild. A course of artificial fever might corral his wandering wits. Again it might not.

Dr. Jackson enjoined relatives and neighbors to remember that “Donald al ways was a nervous boy. And it’s probably worry, his job and all, that did it. Even in school, when other boys laughed and played, Donald worried a lot.”

Donald continued to worry: “I have to get back to my job. I have to keep my priority. . . . Can’t lose my priority. . . . I’m talking a lot. I’ve got to quit that. I’m afraid I’ll just keep it up until I die. . . .”