Behavior: Achievement and Illness

The sicker when young, the brighter when grown? It seems an unlikely proposition, but Psychologist Robert Helmreich of the University of Texas at Austin and Psychiatrist William Prescott of the U.S. Public Health Service in San Juan, P.R., argue that it is true. The Teddy Roosevelt effect, Helmreich calls it, after the President who emerged from a sickly childhood into an adulthood of endeavor and accomplishment.

Via closed-circuit TV, the researchers watched 50 scientists of the Interior Department's Tektite program as they made underwater observations of deep-sea phenomena off the coast of...