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The title of this book in itself is refreshing. Dr. Hinsie has rendered a distinct service in its writing and we hope that it will play a considerable part in dispelling the pessimistic and fatalistic attitude which is generally held regarding dementia precox.
It took a great many years to dispel the popular conception of the feebleminded, based upon the few exceptional boys and girls who were gathered in from the community and institutionalized. A like popular conception, so far as its hopelessness is concerned, has grown up around the concept dementia precox, based upon the same sort of facts, namely, upon the type of individual who finds his way into the public institution. Since the beginning of the century, however, when psychiatry broke away from the confines of the state hospital, and began its practice in the community, this concept has been getting weaker and weaker, for the practicing psychiatrists are seeing more and more frequently the early stages of dementia precox in which the therapeutic problem is by no means either so difficult or so hopeless. These are particularly the cases that Dr.