 Why did Mrs. Price carry around a baby?
Name Your Symptom By JIM HARMON Illustrated by WEISS [Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from Galaxy Science Fiction May 1956. Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.] Henry Infield placed the insulated circlet on his head gently. The gleaming rod extended above his head about a foot, the wires from it leading down into his collar, along his spine and finally out his pants leg to a short metallic strap that dragged on the floor. The people we treat are on one side of the line and we're on the other. How can we really understand the people who come to us, if we hide on our side of the wall?" "I dunno, Henry, but staying on our side is a pretty good way to keep sane Do you know that what we are doing is really the most primitive medicine in the world? One cannibal walking another with sleeping sickness doesn't cure anything. Eventually the savage dies—just as all those sick savages out in the street will die unless we can cure the disease, not only the indications." "Now, Henry, it's no good to talk like that. But now I know we're semi-mechanics, semi-engineers, semi-inventors, semi lots of other things, but certainly not even semi-psychiatrists. A psychiatrist wouldn't give a foetic gyro to a man with claustrophobia." His mind went back to the first gyro ball he had ever issued; the remembrance of his pride in the thing sickened him. Floating before him in memory was the vertical hoop and the horizontal hoop, both of shining steel-impervium alloy. The gyro actually passed over a man's shoulder, through his legs, under his arms. Any time he felt the walls creeping in to crush him, he could withdraw his head and limbs into the circle and feel safe. Steel-impervium alloy could resist even a nuclear explosion. The foetic gyro ball was worn day and night, for life.
 It was a doll that functioned as her Cure for the trauma experienced after the death of her baby whose passing was as a result of Mr. Price's drinking.
 The baby was a mechanized half-human robot that functioned as Mrs. Price's Cure for the trauma she experienced after accidentally killing her real child.  It made her feel matronly, which was a kind of Cure for the trauma she had experienced as a child.  The baby was the child she had with her husband, George Price.  It was a doll that functioned as her Cure for the trauma experienced after the death of her baby whose passing was as a result of Mr. Price's drinking.