One characteristic of the brain-fag problem is an acute loss of memory. Norma Tolliver came to me for this problem. A year earlier, she had been pursuing a promising career as a buyer for a large manufacturing concern. Her forte was her outstanding memory. She knew the sizes, colors, weights, and other specifications of the company’s products, as well as the names and phone numbers of the shipping lines, manufacturers, and other colleagues by heart. Her employers called her the “walking encyclopedia” and relied upon her to have information at the tips of her fingers.
She never failed to supply the information they sought. Then, without warning, her memory began to fade. A succession of doctors analyzed her problem as psychological in origin and offered a number of imaginative explanations. Tolliver tried desperately to hold onto her position, surrounding herself with thick notebooks filled with data of all sorts. This was a transparent device, and her employers became disillusioned, suspecting her of having tricked them all along. Eventually, she was fired.
Testing in a hospital setting revealed serious susceptibility to corn and wheat. Ingestion of these two foods had led to mental cloudiness, memory impairment, and other signs of brain-fag.
Her reaction to the oat test was most dramatic, however. This was her last food test in the hospital, made necessary by the fact (initially overlooked) that she ate oats in some form almost every day: oatmeal porridge, oatmeal cookies, and so forth. After twenty minutes, the test seemed to be negative, and I left the hospital. Miss Tolliver, however, went into a severe reaction to the oats, as was revealed when a nurse’s assistant came into her room and made an innocent comment. Miss Tolliver misinterpreted the comment and became very annoyed; she insisted that the nurse apologize and angrily started calling all over the hospital, demanding to be discharged and cursing out the administrators. It was only in retrospect that she realized that her reaction was, indeed, a cerebral reaction to a common food eaten with addictive regularity—the oats. In fact, this sort of violent moodiness was familiar to her from previous reactions. Avoidance of her incriminated foods, particularly the three grains mentioned, led to an increase in her mental acuity. She eventually found and kept another job.
When brain-fag was first diagnosed, it was believed that food allergy was the sole cause. After 1950, clinical ecologists became aware of the importance of the chemical environment to health. Cases began to be seen which were primarily caused by exposure to common environmental chemicals.
*83\110\2*
