Name Your Symptom
By JIM HARMON
Illustrated by WEISS
[Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from
Galaxy Science Fiction May 1956.
Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that
the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.]
Anybody who shunned a Cure needed his
head examined—assuming he had one left!
Henry Infield placed the insulated circlet on his head gently. Thegleaming rod extended above his head about a foot, the wires from itleading down into his collar, along his spine and finally out his pantsleg to a short metallic strap that dragged on the floor.
Clyde Morgan regarded his partner. "Suppose—just suppose—you wereserious about this, why not just the shoes?"
Infield turned his soft blue eyes to the black and tan oxfords with thevery thick rubber soles. "They might get soaked through."
Morgan took his foot off the chair behind the desk and sat down."Suppose they were soaked through and you were standing on a metalplate—steps or a manhole cover—what good would your lightning rod doyou then?"
Infield shrugged slightly. "I suppose a man must take some chances."
Morgan said, "You can't do it, Henry. You're crossing the line. Thepeople we treat are on one side of the line and we're on the other. Ifyou cross that line, you won't be able to treat people again."
The small man looked out the large window, blinking myopically at thebrassy sunlight. "That's just it, Clyde. There is a line between us,a wall. How can we really understand the people who come to us, if wehide on our side of the wall?"
Morgan shook his thick head, ruffling his thinning red hair. "I dunno,Henry, but staying on our side is a pretty good way to keep sane andthat's quite an accomplishment these days."
Infield whirled and stalked to the desk. "That's the answer! The wholeworld is going mad and we are just sitting back watching it hikealong. Do you know that what we are doing is really the most primitivemedicine in the world? We are treating the symptoms and not thedisease. One cannibal walking another with sleeping sickness doesn'tcure anything. Eventually the savage dies—just as all those sicksavages out in the street will die unless we can cure the disease, notonly the indications."
Morgan shifted his ponderous weight uneasily. "Now, Henry, it's no goodto talk like that. We psychiatrists can't turn back the clock. Therejust aren't enough of us or enough time to give that old-fashionedtherapy to all the sick people."
Infield leaned on the desk and glared. "I called myself a psychiatristonce. But now I know we're semi-mechanics, semi-engineers,semi-inventors, semi lots of other things, but certainly not evensemi-psychiatrists. A psychiatrist wouldn't give a foetic gyro to a manwith claustrophobia."
His mind went back to the first gyro ball he had ever issued; theremembrance of his pride in the thing sickened him. Floating beforehim in memory was the vertical hoop and the horizontal hoop, both ofshining steel-impervium alloy. Transfixed in the twin circles was theface of the patient, slack with smiles and sweat. But his memory wasexaggerating the human element. The gyro actually passed over a man'sshoulder, through his legs, under his arms. Any time he felt thewalls creeping in to crush him, he could wit