Word: lovshin
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...that tired feeling," and complain that their doctors are no help, won sympathy in an unexpected quarter last week. At an Atlantic City meeting of the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists, amid such topics as pelvic surgery and total body sodium, the Cleveland Clinic's Dr. Leonard Lovshin flashed a picture on the screen, explained: "We have here a tired mother. She is not sick-she is tired. She is not maladjusted-she is pooped...
Nothing could be more natural, says Internist Lovshin: "No psychoanalysis or deep probing is necessary. She has a work day of 16 hours, a work week of seven days. This is all against union regulations-no time in the sack. She probably hasn't had a real vacation in years, and she may have various worries about finances, husband and children. Being conscientious, she gets involved in clubs, Brownies, P.T.A.s, heart drives, church work, hauling children, music, dancing." In addition to her children, she usually has animals to raise, and in wear and tear on mother "a puppy equals...
...many children a woman has makes little difference. Dr. Lovshin found. Most of his patients had only one or two. "A woman with one child just worries four times as much about the one as the woman with four children, and it all comes out even." What does make a difference is age. None of his patients were under 20, but many were going on 40. "The nervous system can't take so much after 30, and two hours of screaming is bad enough at any age, but after 36 it is unbearable...
What to do? Many physicians, finding nothing organically wrong, tell such mothers: "It's all in your mind." That only increases their worries and frustrations. Others, said Dr. Lovshin, "get out their pills and potions and injections" and treat the women for complaints of the doctors' own imagining-anemia, low blood pressure, low metabolism. Or, "we tell them they are not eating right, give them vitamins, and since no normal, active mother has any time to eat right, this catches them all." Some doctors become obsessed with a few pounds' overweight, or fancied excesses in coffee drinking...
...Lovshin: "I've instructed my wife, if she ever goes to a doctor, to give nothing but my name, rank and serial number...