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The thirty-sixth Congress of medical alienists and neurologists of France was held in Limoges in July, 1932, under the Chairmanship of Professor Euziere of Montpellier and on the date of the dedication of the bust erected to Gilbert Ballet in that city of his birth. The present volume constitutes the detailed report of the proceedings as set forth by René Charpentier, the Secretary General.
Following the President's address, the first scientific paper was by Professor Achille-Delmas, dealing extensively with the rôle and importance of constitutions in psychopathology. He defined and discussed the matter of constitutional factors at considerable length, describing the conventionally accepted types such as cyclothymic, hyperemotive, paranoid, perverse (folie morale) and mythomaniaque (hysteric) constitutions, and pointing out the general properties peculiar to each, and the various elements of importance constituting the make-up of the types. He proposed the acceptance of other types such as hypochondriacal, anxiety, syntonic, neurasthenic and psychasthenic as having constitutional significance, and reviewed the concepts of various authors regarding the schizoid constitution. After elucidating in a thorough manner the importance of these constitutional concepts to psychiatry, he emphasized that one should not assume a fatalistic attitude toward these factors, as many of them are modifiable by environmental changes, through scientific study of the entire situation. A table is given of syndromes characteristic of, or derived from the various constitutions. This paper was extensively discussed by Professors Ey, Boven, Ley, Hesnard, Courbon, Vermeylen, and several others, all of whom made interesting contributory remarks.
The second paper was neurological, given by Dr. Moreau of Liege on leucoencephalitis and other diffuse affections of the white substance of the brain. The account deals with a thorough study of the symptomatology, special clinical forms, pathological anato