The Psychiatric Novels of Oliver Wendell Holmes: Abridgment, Introduction and Annotation by Clarence P. Oberndorf. (Columbia University Press, New York, 1943. Pp. viii + 268. Price, $3.00.)

Oliver Wendell Holmes is in the news at present. It is just a century ago since he published his epoch-making essay 'On the Contagiousness of Puerperal Fever'. Dr. Oberndorf writes of this: 'The demonstration of the contagious nature of puerperal fever was shared by Holmes and Semmelweis of Austria. The latter has been hailed throughout Europe for this revolutionary discovery, although he published his observations four years after Holmes. Holmes was compelled to face strong opposition to the new theory from reactionary New England colleagues but did not have to meet the bitter antagonism and suffering which Semmelweis endured in Vienna. Ostracism and persecution lent to Semmelweis "the aura of a martyr". On the other hand, in the career of the many-sided Holmes, the observations concerning puerperal fever assumed the place of an episode in a succession of significant activities. The paradoxical simple normalcy of the genius of Holmes needed no martyrdom or eccentricity for its emphasis and he affected none.'

Now Dr. Oberndorf reveals for the first time that Holmes was also in many respects a forerunner of Freud. He chose to convey his ideas on the psychology of neurosis in the form of three novels, which Dr. Oberndorf here calls the psychiatric novels, published in the years 1859, 1867 and 1885 respectively. The present volume contains a full and very interesting introduction, followed by an abridged version of the novels themselves, which are accompanied by a running commentary in the form of footnotes. Dr. Oberndorf finds in the novels unambiguous statements concerning the importance of unconscious mental activity, with the correlative idea of psychical determinism; and also broad hints of the serious importance of dream life, of the mechanism of free association in the flow of thought, of innate bi-sexuality, and of psychical censorship (here unfortunately misprinted as 'censor').

Three distinguished psychologists in Boston knew Oliver Wendell Holmes we