Inman starts with an excerpt from an account of facts concerning Queen Elizabeth's life, as related to religious holidays. He then draws on a rich experience as an ophthalmologist, giving brief case histories which demonstrate a

marked periodicity in certain illnesses with special emphasis on illnesses which occur at Christmas and Easter. These are in turn related to derivations of the Oedipus complex.

To the psychoanalytic psychologist the speculations made by Inman, which bring the festivals of religion in psychological proximity to the causal factors of illness, will be convincing enough. To others such speculations will seem odd, unscientific and uninteresting. The psychoanalyst will place this paper with the author's Styes, Barley and Wedding Rings. His knowledge of the psychology of penitence, and his speculations concerning its connections with the customs of religion, permit him to make predictions on morbidity in an almost mathematical sense.