Recent Progress in Psychiatry

Edited by G. W. T. H. Fleming. Journal of Mental Science, No. 378. London: J. and A. Churchill, Ltd., 1944. 509 pp.

MODERN PSYCHIATRY. By William S. Sadler, M.D. St. Louis: The C. V. Mosby Company, 1945. 896 pp.

Recent Progress in Psychiatry represents the joint effort of a group of distinguished British authorities in psychiatry and related fields. Its purpose is stated in the introduction by the editor: 'It was

felt that, having regard to the stagnation which is so apt to happen to everyone in wartime, the time was ripe to gather together information on recent progress in psychiatry and its ancillary subjects. It is fifteen years since Henry Devine, whose early demise was such a loss to British psychiatry, issued his Recent Advances in Psychiatry. The period of time since then is too great to cover adequately with paper supplies restricted, so the present review is confined to work published during the five year period 1938–1942, and in some instances the first half of 1943.'

In this volume the literature of the period surveyed has been very thoroughly explored and the essential data are firmly compressed within the limits of the book; hence it is impossible in a brief review to do more than indicate the scope of the project and allow the interested reader to consult original sources. A. A. W. Petrie contributes a chapter on administrative and organizational plans for a national mental health service. Following this there are several chapters on preclinical subjects and on various laboratory adjuvants in psychiatry: genetics in psychiatry (E. T. O. Slater), the anatomy of the nervous system (W. E. Le Gros Clark), physiological psychology (F. L. Golla), electroencephalography (W. Grey Walter), biochemistry of the nervous system (D. Richter), vitamin deficiency and the psychoses (W. A. Caldwell and S. W. Hardwick), neuro-endocrine relationship (M. Reiss), mental testing (M. B. Brody), neuropathology (A. Meyer). Recent contributions in psychopathology