At Bellevue

Each day of last year's 366 Thomas F. Coffey, acting lieutenant of New York's police force in charge of traffic death records, feared that he would turn up a report reading: COFFEY, JANE: father, COFFEY, Thomas F.

Last week he cast up his 1932 total: 1,031 deaths, 262 of them children; his daughters Jane and Marian were still unhurt. But thoughts of other fathers' 262 children railroaded through Thomas F. Coffey's brain--2.6.2 . . . 2.6.2 . . . 2.6.2 . . . 2.6.2. . . .

Next morning Acting Lieut. Coffey, 47, put on civilian clothes, strapped his holster to his waist, placed his service pistol in the holster. Last thing before he left home he slipped his police badge in a pocket, for identification in case anything happened.

Late that evening a tired, trembling, haggard man appeared at Manhattan's Bellevue Hospital, asked for the physician in charge. Dr. Arthur Tiber answered. Announced the stranger thickly: "I am Lieutenant Coffey, of the Safety Bureau. The police have been looking for me all day. Please take my pistol from me. I am very nervous. I feel that I am going to have a breakdown."

Dr. Tiber, astonished, looked at him.

Again the officer pleaded to be relieved of his pistol, showed his identifying police badge. Dr. Tiber asked him why he did not do so himself.

The man: "I'm afraid to touch it. I'm afraid of what I might do."

The doctor gingerly took the weapon from the officer, administered a sedative, put him to sleep in the psychopathic ward, where after a few days he recovered from his phobia.

Ten years ago Dr. Anthony Hector Desloges, Montreal psychiatrist, declared that, in his opinion, the whole world would be mentally deranged by 1948 if no change occurred in the general trend of mental hygiene. Last week Psychiatrist Desloges, 58, chief of the division of social hygiene for the Province of Quebec, president of the Provincial committee on mental hygiene, solemnly stated that Society has already reached a stage of general madness. Said he: "There is more insanity outside of the hospitals than inside."

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