LABORATORY AND BRANCH RESEARCH REVIEWS 91Charles Savage, M.D.
Laboratory Member
Courtesy of the National Library
of Medicine
The Psychosomatic Medicine Branch did not have a chief for some
time, but Cohen had nonetheless been able to recruit several investigators
to begin studying the relationship between psychological and physiological
phenomena in “diabetes mellitus, peptic ulcer, anorexia nervosa, bronchial
asthma, and hypertension.”^9 Psychological data were obtained through
psychiatric interviews and psychological assessments and physiological
data consisted of measured alterations in metabolic, endocrine, nervous,
electrolyte, hemodynamic, and gastrointestinal functions.^10
In June 1955, the two sections and the branch were combined to
form the joint Laboratory of Clinical Science.^11 This was an organizational
as well as a programmatic move, as was reflected in its seven reorganized
sections: Biochemistry (basic, under Marian Kies), Physiology (clinical,
under Evarts), Pharmacology (basic, under Julius Axelrod),^12 Psychiatry
(clinical, under Seymour Perlin and later William Pollin), (Internal)
Medicine (clinical, under Roger McDonald), Cerebral Metabolism (basic,
under Louis Sokoloff^13 ), and a Section of the Chief (under Kety).^14 The
Section of the Chief was comprised of two units on Schizophrenia and
Psychosomatics, under Elwood H. LaBrosse and Philippe V. Cardon,
Jr., respectively.
The new laboratory attempted to apply biological disciplines such as
biochemistry, physiology, and pharmacology to the problems of mental
disease, and thus focused on seeking biological correlates to personality
and psychological processes in normal and abnormal behavior.^15 Toward