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A Note on the Future of Phenylketonuria

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  08 February 2018

J. E. Cawte*
Affiliation:
Enfield Receiving House, Adelaide Honorary Tutor in Clinical Psychiatry, University of Adelaide At present in U.S.A. as a Fellow of the Commonwealth Fund, New York

Extract

The new clan of treated phenylketonurics (1) cannot be assumed to be a happy one, or one with a high proportion of well adjusted individuals. Conceding for the moment that the Phenylketonuric, if he sticks to his diet, will retain much of his intelligence, it is safe to predict that he will be miserable. One of his life's basic processes for satisfaction, his food, has been seriously tampered with, and replaced by a conflict. Eggs, milk, cheese, meat, fish, poultry, most fruit, even ordinary bread, are taboo for his table. He will consume a diet which will be cunningly prepared and flavoured, but he can hardly say that he “eats food”. His fate is that the satisfaction—and the surcease—of incorporating various articles of food does not exist for him, or only in an attenuated form.

Type
Original Articles
Copyright
Copyright © Royal College of Psychiatrists, 1956 

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References

1. Woolf, L. I., Griffiths, R., and Moncrieff, H. A., Brit. Med. J., 1955, i, 57.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
2. Bickel, H., Gerhard, J., and Hickman, E. M., Lancet, 1953, ii, 812.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
3. Darlington, C. D., The Facts of Life, 1954. Allen and Unwin.Google Scholar
4. Lundin, G., and Moller, A., Acta Psychiatrica et Neurologica, Scand., 26, 177.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
5. Neel, J. V., Research Publications of the A.R.N.M.D., 1952, 33.Google Scholar
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