244
The Body Electric
I was an orthopedic surgeon, about as far removed as possible from
the psychiatric expertise needed for a serious study of behavior. And
suppose I did find something? Who would believe me if I ventured so
far from my specialty? The whole idea was preposterous to the science of
the time, anyway. Still, I had to do something.
During the International Geophysical Year of 1957-58, I'd been a
volunteer in the Aurora Watch Program. To find out whether the north-
ern lights appeared simultaneously
throughout the north latitudes in
response to changes in the earth's magnetic field (they did), IGY orga-
nizers recruited a worldwide network of amateur observers to go out into
their backyards every night and look at the sky. All of us got weekly
reports on the state of the field from the national magnetic observatory
at Fredericksburg, Virginia. I decided to go back through this data and
see if there was any correlation between the disturbances in earth's field
caused by magnetic storms on the sun, and the rate of psychiatric admis-
sions to our VA hospital.
Luckily for me, Howard Friedman, the hospital's chief of psychology,
was collecting donations door to door for a local Boy Scout troop at
about this time. At one house, the family dog took an instant dislike to
him and bit his ankle. After bandaging the wound, Howard's doctor
gave him a tetanus booster shot. As luck would have it, Howard came
down with a rare allergic reaction that involved fever, fatigue, nausea,
and painful swelling of all the joints.
Since I was the nearest bone-and-joint man, Howard came to see me.
This type of reaction is frightening, but not dangerous, and disappears
of its own accord in a day or two. After I made the diagnosis and reas-
sured him, we sat and talked for a few minutes. After some chitchat
about the shortcomings of the hospital administration, he gestured at
the papers tacked all over the walls of my office and asked, "What are all
those charts?" I told him about my magnetic brainstorms.
He obviously thought I was as crazy as the people whose admissions I
was charting, and probably wondered about the advice I'd just given.
However, after hearing the background, he agreed it wasn't as silly as it
sounded, and offered to help. It was a real break for me, since he was
already a respected researcher, and a practical, open-minded one to boot.
My diagnosis was correct, and our collaboration lasted almost two dec-
ades.
Howard's reputation got us access to the records of state psychiatric
hospitals, giving us a sample large enough to be statistically useful. We
matched the admissions of over twenty-eight thousand patients at eight
hospitals against sixty-seven magnetic storms over the previous
four