Evening star., 1945-06-03
MEN Who had been in q
stupor for days fred inaag-
mary machine guns"

ttuI HCuIfLTtC SHfto.
Petersburg Fla, where the man who
discovered its usefulness is chief psychi-
artist and at other Army and Navy
hospitals.
The flyers call it flax Juice" The
scientific name is sodium pentothal but
there's nothing mysterious about it. The
drug has been used for years as short
acting anesthetic, the kind a doctor
might inject while he's setting frac-
ture. In fact, that's how 1t. Col. Roy
r. Grinker, now director of psychiatry
at Don-Ce-Sar, first happened to use it.
Fear of Battle Dreams
Early in 1s43, when lot of airmen
and ground troops were getting their
first taste of combat in North Africa,
violent form of war neurosis began to
crop up. Hospitals already overcrowded
with wounded were having to take in
men with nothing physical the matter
with them. Men who had come out of
prolonged mortar fire or had had one
particularly terrifying battle experience
or had seen their best friends head
blown off sat mute and helpless or were
lost in hopeless depression or couldn't
sleep for fear of battle dreams.
Col. Grinker was sent to North Africa.
He found that as some of the men talked
about the experience that had brought
on their terrible anxiety, they were all
right and could 60 back to combat. But
others were imprisoned by their men,
ories. They couldn't talk.
Amazing Results
Col. Grinker knew that sodium pento-
thai. developed by American scientists,
had been used in hospitals as an anes-
thetic. He found quantities of it on
hand for minor operations.
The psychiatrist began to try the drug
in smaller doses than that needed for
anesthesia on some of his patients in the
field hospital. The results were amaz-
ing. Under its influence. men who had
been sitting in a stupor for days, leaped
to their feet and actually relived the
experience that had shattered them.
They fired imaginary machine guns,
rammed imaginary bayonets at an imag-
mary enemy, talked themselves out
They no longer jumped at the sound
of door closing. They could eat and
sleep again. Their dreams were no
longer haunted by what they had seen.
This quick cure was all right for men
at the front, but there were also men
coming home with what the air forces
call "operational fatigue" Sometimes
the symptoms that warn psychiatrists
something is wrong didn't begin to show
themselves until the men had had their
furlough and were waiting at redis-
tribution center for a new assignment.
They Don't Know What's Wrong
Some of them, flight surgeons attached
to fighting units sent home before the
end of the combat tour. But sometimes,
relief from flying, a change from the
constant threat of death, seemed only
to make the symptoms worse.
At home, the men knew there was
something wrong with them. They were
restless, couldn't concentrate, were suf-
fering from headaches or a nervous
stomach" They were anxious about
things that had never disturbed them
before and sometimes, so depressed
that the future looked black. There
seemed to be nothing left to live for.
"You ask those men what's wrong
with them and they honestly say they
don't know" said 1t. Col. Donald w.
Hastings, chief of the neuro- -psychiatric
branch OF the Office Of the Air Surgeon
here. Normally, it would take perhaps
40 one-hour interviews to find out what
is underlying their anxiety. But we don't
have that much time. If we gave each
one that much treatment, we could only
take care of few of our patients"
The question was how to speed up the
treatment, how to get these men healed
of their mental wounds quickly. Again,
the psychiatrists resorted to sodium
pentothal.
Its one and only function is to un-
cover rapidly the basic troubles OF these
men," Col. Hastings emphasized. with