Word: symptom
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...Homosexuality is not an inherited taint. There is no reason to believe that there is even an inherited tendency or susceptibility to it. Nobody is born with it, and it is not glandular in origin.* It is not a disease in itself but is a symptom of an underlying emotional disorder. This disorder may be of any kind and any degree of severity. It may be a common neurosis that leaves the patient outwardly well enough to go about his affairs, and amenable to treatment if he chooses to accept it. Or the victim may be a psychopathic personality, with...
...psychiatrist will treat the parents as much as the boy, in an effort to correct the flaws in the youngster's background. He will seem to pay little attention to the symptom of homosexuality, being scrupulously careful not to give it disproportionate emphasis. Instead, he will help the boy to see how his emotional growth has been stunted or twisted by factors that he did not understand. Then, when the whole personality is once more developing along more nearly normal lines, the problem of homosexuality can be resolved...
...first place, Dr. Wintrobe emphasized, anemia is no longer recognized as a disease, but only as a symptom of some other disease. As a result, a whole class of so-called "primary anemias" is being dropped from medical thinking, e.g., pernicious anemia is now known to be a metabolic upset in which the system fails to make proper use of vitamin B12. Once the cause of this or practically any other anemia is tracked down, the underlying complaint can be treated and the symptom usually disappears...
After the degree of anemia, the doctor must find the cause. There is no excuse nowadays, Dr. Wintrobe contends, for a doctor who just picks a shotgun type of blood tonic from the medical advertisements and hopes for the best. Prescribing iron is merely treating the symptom, and often worthless: an adult male should get all the iron he needs from a normal diet, unless he is losing blood; so should a woman, barring unusual menstrual difficulties. The iron deficiency may be a clue which will lead the thorough physician to a kidney disorder, a liver infection, inflammation...
...more serious symptom of Freud's condition was his sudden passion for cocaine. "The essential constituent of coca leaves" had only recently been introduced into Europe, and young Freud went crazy over the "magical drug." Convinced that it was harmless, he gave it to his patients (one of whom died), pressed it on all his friends (including Martha), and himself took "very small doses of it regularly against depression and . . . indigestion." He wrote a paper describing "the most gorgeous excitement" it aroused in animals, and exulted in the "virility" it aroused in him. "Woe to you, my Princess, when...