Physician, Blame Thyself

Most diseases are caused by microbes and viruses--but some can be blamed on tactless doctors. Denver's Dr. Frank Rodney Drake believes that a whole group of illnesses should be labeled iatrogenic,* or doctor-caused. These illnesses are the kind that most doctors blame on the patient's mind and call psychosomatic (TIME, Oct. 6).

Dr. Drake, now studying iatrogenic illness for the University of Colorado's School of Medicine and the Colorado Psychopathic Hospital, reported some preliminary findings in the American Journal of the Medical Sciences.

Clumsy doctors are one of the chief causes of chronic invalidism, according to Dr. Drake. Repeated examinations for organic disease may scare the patient half to death, suggest that he must have some rare and fatal complaint that puzzles the medical experts. By concentrating on organic medicine and neglecting the emotional side of illness, a doctor may prolong his patient's illness indefinitely. Anxious patients in need of psychiatric treatment more than anything else "are always made worse and sometimes incurable by surgical procedures."

Some of Dr. Drake's case histories:

P: A 3 2-year-old woman suffered from anxiety that made her heart beat erratically. Her doctor told her: "You may have had such a severe heart attack that you barely escaped death." Then he gave her digitalis. She ran out of money buying digitalis, and got no better. The second doctor she went to told her: "You have angina pectoris," and advised a hospital. Psychiatric treatment finally cleared up the "heart trouble."

P: The patient, a married woman suffering from "nerves," was told that removal of her "toxic thyroid" would solve all her troubles. The operation failed to cure her nervousness, which turned out to be caused by an unhappy marriage.

P: 23-year-old girl spent two years in bed after a series of doctors told her that she had I) high blood pressure, 2) a heart murmur, 3) rheumatic fever, 4) tuberculosis, 5) brucellosis (undulant fever). Psychiatric treatment finally got her out of bed.

Dr. Drake concludes that general practitioners, especially country doctors, do a far better job than most because they know each patient, his background and his particular emotional problems. At causing iatrogenic illnesses, city specialists are the worst offenders.

* From the Greek: iatros (physician) and gen-(producing).

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