TWO MISTAKEN DIAGNOSES OF FATAL ILLNESS IN BROTHERS
Richard Winkelmayer M.D.1,
A. Bradford Judd M.D.1, and
Richard P. Stearns M.S.S.S.1
1 The Children's Psychiatric Center, Inc., Monmouth County, Eatontown, New Jersey
Understanding the emotional impact of physical illness is generally recognized as an indispensable aspect of good medical practice. The diagnosis of fatal illness and the feelings connected with it possibly present the most difficult challenge in the art of medicine. We have tried to present some of the factors that led a mother to influence independent specialists to supply her with diagnoses of fatal diseases for two of her children. We feel that such processes are quite often at work, and we might have dismissed the untenable diagnosis of a fatal disease with the remark, "such things happen," were it not for the fact that this unlikely event happened twice in the same family. As physicians, we should all like to believe that our knowledge of the science of medicine is sufficient to remove us from the possibility of parental or other influence in such an instance. However, we are always exposed to these influences, and we may be swayed by them more often than we care to admit.
Submitted on November 21, 1966
Accepted on May 5, 1967
