NIEMAND. A doctor must always do something for the patients who come to
his office seeking help. First I gave them a thorough physical
examination. I turned up some minor ailments--a slight heart murmur or a
trace of albumin in the urine--but nothing of any significance. On the
whole they were a remarkably healthy bunch of individuals, much more so
than an average sample of the population. Then I made a searching
inquiry into their personal life. Here again I drew a blank. They had no
particular financial worries. Their sex life was generally satisfactory.
There was no history of mental illness in the family. In fact, the only
thing that seemed to be the matter with them was that there were times
when they felt like hell.
LATHAM. I suppose you tried tranquilizers?
NIEMAND. Oh, yes. In a few cases in which I tried tranquilizing pills of
the meprobamate type there was some slight improvement. I want to
emphasize, however, that I do not believe in prescribing shotgun
remedies for a patient. To my way of thinking it is a lazy slipshod way
of carrying on the practice of medicine. The only thing for which I do
give myself credit was that I asked my patients to keep a detailed
record of their symptoms taking special care to note the time of
exacerbation--increase in the severity of the symptoms--as accurately as
possible.
LATHAM. And this gave you a clue?
NIEMAND. It was the beginning. In most instances patients reported the
attack struck with almost the impact of a physical blow. The prodromal
symptoms were usually slight ... a sudden feeling of uneasiness and
guilt ... hot and cold flashes ... dizziness ... double vision. Then
this ghastly sense of depression coupled with a blind insensate rage at
life. One man said he felt as if the world were closing in on him.
Another that he felt the people around him were plotting his
destruction. One housewife made her husband lock her in her room for
fear she would injure the children. I pored over these case histories
for a long time getting absolutely nowhere. Then finally a pattern began
to emerge.
* * * * *
LATHAM. What sort of pattern?
NIEMAND. The first thing that struck me was that the attacks all
occurred during the daytime, between the hours of about seven in the
morning and five in the evening. Then there were these coincidences--
LATHAM. Coincidences?
NIEMAND. Total strangers miles apart were stricken at almost the same
moment. At first I thought nothing of it but as my records accumulated I
became convinced it could not be attributed to chance. A mathematical
analysis showed the number of coincidences followed a Poisson
distribution very closely. I couldn't possibly see what daylight had to
do with it. There is some evidence that mental patients are most
disturbed around the time of full moon, but a search of medical
literature failed to reveal any connection with the Sun.
LATHAM. What did you do?
NIEMAND. Naturally I said nothing of this to my patients. I did,
however, take pains to impress upon them the necessity of keeping an
exact record of the onset of an attack. The better records they kept the
more conclusive was the evidence. Men and women were experiencing nearly
simultaneous attacks of rage and depression all over southern
California, which was as far as my practice extended. One day it
occurred to me: if people a few miles apart could be stricken
simultaneously, why not people hundreds or thousands of miles apart? It
was this idea that prompted me to get in touch with an old colleague of
mine I had known at UC medical school, Dr. Max Hillyard, who was in
practice in Utica, New York.
LATHAM. With what result?
NIEMAND. I was afraid the result would be that my old roommate would
think I had gone completely crazy. Imagine my surprise and gratification
on receiving an answer by return mail to the effect that he also had
been getting an increasing number of patients suffering with the same
identical symptoms as my own. Furthermore, upon exchanging records we
_did_ find that in many cases patients three thousand miles apart had
been stricken simultaneously--
LATHAM. Just a minute. I would like to know how you define
"simultaneous."
NIEMAND. We say an attack is simultaneous when one occurred on the east
coast, for example, not earlier or later than five minutes of an attack
on the west coast. That is about as close as you can hope to time a
subjective effect of this nature. And now another fact emerged which
gave us another clue.
LATHAM. Which was?
NIEMAND. In every case of a simultaneous attack the Sun was shining at
both New York and California.