I was interviewed by The Wall Street Journal, and... and I was quoted as saying, 'It’s impossible to publish a case history now, medicine is all statistical', or something like this. I then got a letter from the Editor of JAMA, The Journal of the American Medical Association, saying that he had read this in The Wall Street Journal and it was not the case, and to show that it was not the case he invited me to submit a case history. So I said, 'Fine', and I submitted to him the case of the colour-blind painter. When it arrived they said, 'Of course, this will need peer review'. I was a bit taken aback because this hadn’t been mentioned to me before, they said, 'Can you suggest any reviewers?' And I mentioned Richard Gregory as one reviewer and another reviewer. I said of both of them, these are people of very broad visual interests and... and spacious mind and generous temperament, and they carry a lot of intellectual weight.
I said, on the other hand, do not send it to Doctor X, who will feel that I’m trespassing on his territory and will throw a conniption if he gets this, he’ll boil me alive. Well, I then got sent... I then got sent an annihilating comment, or series of comments and I phoned up the editor, oh, it was one of the sub-editors, and I said, 'I cannot imagine that Richard Gregory, even if he was psychotic or delirious would write such a hateful thing, and could be so mean-spirited'. I said, 'I trust it was not Doctor X', and she didn’t answer, and then I said, 'Okay, I understand'. And she got very upset and she said, 'Look, we’re not supposed to... to disclose the names of reviewers', so I said, 'Don’t worry, you haven’t disclosed anything'. But I will say that this is all passed now, and Doctor X and I are good friends, but I found that disconcerting.
And... on the whole I... but I do continue to submit occasional things to... to medical journals or scientific journals. I had a letter with Ralph Siegel in Science, and I was very pleased when Brain, the very prestigious journal which goes back to 1870 or the 1880s published an article of mine, an article which was not peer-reviewed and which was not attacked and which was in my own style, in fact, it was really the... the primordium of Musicophilia.