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Psychiatrist In Workmen's Compensation Field, Donald W. Loria

Cleveland State Law Review

At one time, if a physician could find no objective evidence of disability, an employee usually lost his workmen's compensation case. If the x-ray and the electroencephalogram were negative, if no muscle spasm were present, if the diminished sensation to pinprick followed no anatomical pattern-if the doctors could find nothing in the examination to substantiate the employee's complaints of pain-the decision invariably found the employee was malingering. Compensation was denied. Toward the middle of this century, psychiatry began to offer some explanations.