The objectives of nursing care are to assist the patient in overcoming his symptoms and
to help him return to a euthyroid condition. The nurse maintains a calm manner and
understands that much of his nervousness and anxiety is beyond his control. Activities to
lessen the irritability of the nervous system may include the following: protecting the
patient from stressful experiences, such as upsetting visitors or the presence of annoying
or very ill patients; providing a cool and uncluttered environment; and encouraging the
patient to enjoy pleasant music, light television entertainment, and interesting and
relaxing hobbies. [fn 41]
This is hardly a description of the White House situation room.
During the course of this debate, newspapers printed summaries of substances which are
thought to have an influence on thyroid activity. These included germs such as yersinia
enterocolitica, certain types of retrovirus, lithium, iodine, and the so-called goitrogens.
This last category includes chemicals found in vegetables such as broccoli and cabbage.
The New York Times of May 19 carried two letters to the editor on this subject. One,
from Professor Franklin M. Loew, Dean of the Tufts University Veterinary School,
recalled that vegetables of the brassica family, such as brussel sprouts, kale, and broccoli
contain substances that may help to prevent Graves' disease. The other letter reported that
the popular guide, Prescription for Nutritional Healing, recommends plenty of broccoli to
guard against the dangers of the overactive thyroid. All of this once again posed the
question of Bush's outbursts about broccoli, which may have been urged on his by
physicians seeking a way to mitigate some of his symptoms.
On May 29, Bush's foremost political prisoner, Lyndon H. LaRouche commented on
Bush's mental health:
....In the past several days, particularly, there has been increasing discussion of President
George Bush's state of mental health. At the same time, questions have been raised as to
which of his decisions, beginning for example with the Panama decisions and the Iraqi
decisions, might have been caused, or largely shaped, by the influence of a mental
disorder. ...I base myself primarily upon what I have directly observed and have also
reported since my observation of a press conference which President Bush delivered
during the high point of the US invasion of Panama, at the end of 1989. At that time, I
observed, from what I saw on the television screen, that the President was in a dissociated
state such that at least at that moment or in that context, the stresses of what he was doing
had overwhelmed him, and he was to all intents and purposes virtually psychotic at that
time."
LaRouche illustrated Bush's disorder with the following example:
Many of us know, sometime, quasi-successful or successful business executives and
others who are most unpleasant personalities to work with, precisely because they are
given to obsessions, and can be set off into terrible states of rage if any of these irrational
obsessions is disturbed. That is, if these obsessions are frustrated in any way, the