Gay, Frederick P. The Open Mind: Elmer Ernest Southard. Chicago:  Normandie House. $5.00.

Into the writing of this autobiography of Elmer Ernest Southard by his friend and classmate, Dr. Gay, has gone a vast amount of that loyalty, enthusiasm and awe for a man of indubitable genius that his unusual intellect aroused in all with whom it came into contact. The book is made up, not only of Dr. Gay's own personal memories of Dr. Southard, but memories and impressions of the man from letters, to or from him, and from impressions of his friends, the men and women with whom he worked, his students and his intimate friends. All agree as to the singularity of Southard's personality and to his influence in the multiple activities he followed which reach far beyond his own generation.

Dr. Gay has prepared the book with minute care for detail. He has gone thoroughly into the details of Southard's life and has limned a picture of the man, his profound intelligence, the dynamic mind which could master several disciplines and carry along several activities in a short time, where the average man can only compass two or three during his entire career. Gay tells of his ability as a pathologist which was made apparent during the freshman year at the Harvard Medical School. He was influenced to study medicine by his work with William James in his undergraduate years at Harvard College, in which his interest was stimulated by the variabilities of the human mind. Later, his capabilities as educator and director of the destinies of several State hospitals and private institutions, was profoundly affected by his early psychological training. His dream of a psychopathic hospital in Boston which later materialized and his years as director of that hospital, the many researches begun by him, are still being carried on by physicians, scientists, social workers, and students in places far from the site of his work.

Dr. Gay devotes an entire chapter to Southard's side-interests, philology, etymology and philosophy which began in his college days and continued throughout his short life.