Abraham Myerson

The late ABRAHAM MYERSON was one of Boston’s most distinguished psychiatrists. He received his training at Tufts Medical School; he had been affiliated with several private and state hospitals, and at the peak of a versatile, rigorous career he was brought down by heart disease. He took the diagnosis courageously and so sensibly that he lived out twelve full years. This account of how he kept a stop watch on himself was written shortly before his death and is drawn from the book When Doctors Are Patients, edited by Max Pinner. M.D., and Benjamin F. Miller, M.D., which Norton will publish this month.

Born in Lithuania, DR. ABRAHAM MEYERSON came to the United States as a young boy. He was educated in the Boston public schools and later worked as a streetcar conductor while studying in the College of Physicians and Surgeons at Columbia. He transferred to Tufts Medical School in 1906 and there came under the dynamic influence of Dr. Morton Prince. So began the study and research in neuropsychiatry which were to make him a leading psychiatrist in this country. His books, The Inheritance of Mental Diseases and Social Pyschology, were standard works, and in 1936 he wrote the first definitive report on eugenical sterilization. The Atlantic has drawn the following article from his posthumous book, Speaking of Man, to be published by Knopf in November.