MEDICAL ROUNDUP

New Book Criticizes Homosexuality Laws

By Water C. Alvarez, M. D. parents smoked, the the correbreakdown was ushered in by insomnia, I am a great believer Emeritus Consultant in Medicine, Mayo

Medicine, Mayo Foundation Clinic and Emeritus Professor of

I was happy the other day to receive from Julius Messner,

in New York, one of the first copies of Peter Wildeblood's thought-producing book homosexuality-first published

in London.

This book, written by a fine man and able newspaper correspondent, shows us how viciously, unfairly and illegally! the police of a great country could behave toward

a man

on

DR. WALTER C. ALVAREZ

whose only offense was that he had written affectionate letters to his old war buddy and had received similar letters from him. One day he was grabbed by the police and thrown into Jail, in spite of the fact that he had not committed any criminal act.

When the British people, learned about this outrage, they were disgusted. The Wolfenden Committee was appointed to study homosexual problems as well as problems of prostitution.

The committee advised the repeal of England's archaic and cruel laws in regard to homosexuality, but when polls indicated that the public still was not sufficiently educated in regard to this problem to be sympathetic, the government did nothing."

Our ancient laws on prostitutlon also sadly need change. Too often they are used only as a means of blackmailing unfortunate women.

I hope that all thoughtful and compassionate persons in the United States will read "Against the Law" and will then look favorable on having our laws changed. Let us all face the fact that homosexualIty is a common peculiarity of both men and women.

From ancient times the problem has been with us. There are all degrees of it. Some of these people can marry and stay married for years, while others cannot stand living for three days in the same apartment with a person of the opposite sex.

After studying the problem among many patients and after reading most of the available literature on the subject, I am satisfied that most of these people cannot be cured by either psychotherapy or the use of drugs.

sponding percentages were 16.2 and 6.8. Decidedly fewer smokers were found among children of the best-educated parents.

Loss of Sleep

In the last few months I have read some 75 books by people who once went insane and then wrote about their experience.

As I read, one of the things that impressed me was that in case after case the nervous

weeks or months of severe inin giving barbiturates, in reasomnia, when the person could sonable amounts, to persons not get to sleep. In many of who have great difficulty in these cases, the person might getting to sleep or in staying have been spared years of sufasleep. fering if, in this early stage of Many of my doctor friends mental trouble, he had only who always have slept like a and kindly physician who knew After a while he'll learn to been able to find a sensible top say, “Oh, let him lie awake. how devastating insomnia can sleep." The only trouble with be, and how safe for all but this idea is that those of us rare persons-barbiturates can men who, each day, have to be. go to an office and work hard, or those mothers who, each day, must start housekeeping,

Perhaps because, for half of my life, I suffered from severe