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In his preface to the second edition, Dr. Tredgold reminds us that the broad aspect of psychiatry is being lost sight of. Many nonmedical psychologists are now treating mental disease, while a number of physicians are concerned solely with certain aspects of psychiatry. The failure until now to find definite brain pathology
for many mental disorders, it is stressed, does not necessarily indicate that they are mainly psychogenic. Psychological medicine includes not only the psychoneuroses but other forms of mental disturbance due to toxins, infections, vascular disease, injuries and other pathological changes in the brain. Finally, the subject has its special methods of investigation and treatment as well as special legal and social implications.
With this in mind, Dr. Tredgold has written this manual for the medical student and general practitioner, to acquaint them in 'a concise, practical and readable' fashion with the essentials of so broad a topic. He has succeeded admirably in his aim. The field of psychiatry is well covered and adequately presented in fine clinical descriptions. The sections on war neuroses and malingering and the chapter on mental disorder due to head injury are unusually well presented with a completeness not usually seen in a manual.
In the chapter on schizophrenia, Dr. Tredgold differentiates between schizophrenia and dementia præcox. Although these two terms are generally used synonymously, the author believes that this is not justified. Schizophrenia represents a symptom complex which may occur in many widely different conditions. It may be induced experimentally by the administration of mescalin or may occur as a special type of reaction to mental stress, or in the course of an idiopathic, or endogenous, degenerative process. Dementia præcox, he believes, is a disease entity, followed by permanent mental deterioration and is due to organic disintegration.
Throughout the book, Dr. Tredgold makes frequent references to constitut