Common Medical Disorders Rarely Found in Psychotic Patients

The low incidence of some of the commoner medical disorders in a psychiatric hospital has many practical and theoretical implications. If one has worked, as I have, for several years in an allergy outpatient clinic of a large general hospital, one is especially impressed by the low incidence of allergy of the respiratory tract encountered in psychiatric patients. In spite of the published literature concerning this fact, I have made it my special interest to investigate every sneeze I heard on the wards of the neuropsychiatric VA Hospital, Bedford, Mass., during the fall hay-fever seasons. On practically every occasion it turned out to have been a nurse, secretary, aide, doctor, or other employee, but very seldom a patient. In this paper there will be presented (1) a short review of the literature dealing with the frequency of psychosomatic diseases among psychotics; (2) a report on observations in the VA Hospital,