This paper sets out to demonstrate similarities of behaviour between obsessionals and hysterics in responses to perceptual conflict, which might be expected on the basis of psycho-analytical theories, but which could not be predicted from the dimensional framework of personality favoured by Eysenck in which obsessionals and hysterics are found at opposite poles of an introversion-extroversion continuum, and in which anxiety states, depressives and obsessionals are grouped together in one indistinguishable category of dysthymia.

Only 16 cases of folie à trois have been reported in the English literature (Wolff, 1957). The present case seems worth recording because of the rarity with which this condition is described and the problems it raises.

Now that more than six years have elapsed since the introduction of leucotomy in this country, it is becoming possible to assess more accurately its remoter effects. The increasing use that is being made of the operation bears witness to the beneficial results that have been obtained by it, but the justifiable enthusiasm occasioned by the dramatic improvements it has produced in some cases apparently resistant to all other present-day methods of treatment must be tempered by a sober consideration of all the sequelae of section of the prefrontal fibres. While it is undoubted that after it many cases are sufficiently recovered to resume a full and satisfactory social life, and an even larger number are either freed from intense misery or from hostility and aggressive impulses and enabled to take a more co-operative part in the sheltered life of a hospital community, there are a few whose behaviour following the operation is definitely less satisfactory than it was even at the height of their illness. Furthermore, even in the successful cases, certain undesirable traits have often been noted.

Discussing experimental psychiatry Kraepelin observes that lack of comprehension of the experimental test, lack of ability to execute it, lack of interest, of co-operation, and of endurance, all conspire to increase the task of the experimenter and to modify the value of the results. The consequent demand for trustworthy experimental methods, which without too complicated technique and too unusual demands on the patient shall yield information of significant variations from the normal in quantitative terms, voices at once the need and the embarrassment of the experimental psychiatrist. The determination of the electrical conductivity of the skin is undoubtedly one valuable method of approach in this search after quantitative information, and this paper is the result of some months' investigation which I carried out at the Maudsley Hospital, when, through the kindness of the Medical Superintendent, Dr. E. Mapother, I had put at my disposal cases of psycho-neuroses and early psychoses.

This paper is an attempt to record the experience gained in treating 44 schizophrenics in this hospital with cardiazol from September, 1937, when the treatment was first used, to the middle of April, 1938.

The nervous origin of paroxysmal tachycardia was stressed by many German-speaking authors (Hering, 1911; Rothberger and Winterberg, 1911a; Rothberger and Winterberg, 1911b; Schlesinger, 1906) at the beginning of the century. Thus Schlesinger (1906) pointed out that many patients who suffered from this disorder had neurasthenic or hysterical personalities. He postulated that there was a mechanism responsible for the attacks of tachycardia which could be set in motion by a stimulus in the nervous system. Somewhat later a French cardiologist (Gallavardin, 1922) described a type of paroxysmal tachycardia which he believed was of nervous origin. In more recent times Stokvis (1947) has given an account of a Jewish patient who was taught to think himself into an attack in order to avoid deportation by the German occupation authorities in Holland. There is some pharmacological support for the central origin of paroxysmal tachycardia. Thus Klein (1940) described a schizophrenic patient who when treated with pentamethylene tetrazol developed supraventricular paroxysmal tachycardia four minutes after the injection of the drug. He suggested that the delay between the injection and the onset of the attack indicated that the attack was due to an effect of the drug on the central nervous system. Several different workers (Evans, 1940; Peters and Penner, 1946) have claimed that intravenous injection of ergotamine tartrate will relieve an attack of supraventricular paroxysmal tachycardia within a few minutes. Rothlin and Cerletti (1949) have shown that the effect of adrenaline on the heart is not altered by ergot alkaloids, so that the effect of ergotamine in paroxysmal tachycardia cannot be due to an unopposed vagal effect and must therefore be due to a direct action on the brain centres which regulate cardiac activity.

In pre-revolutionary China most disabled persons had no opportunity to receive education or obtain employment, and many of them experienced social discrimination. After the founding of the People's Republic, the government adopted a number of measures aimed at guaranteeing their livelihood. Efforts were made to give those who maintained the ability to work the opportunity to do so; those who were unable to work were provided with emergency relief or, if they had no family members who could support them, placed in orphanages, long-term psychiatric hospitals, and other types of welfare institution. Once the basic livelihood needs of the disabled were met, the next objective was to provide rehabilitative services. The evolution of these services has depended on three separate but related developments: the maturation of an organisational structure for the co-ordination of the services; the promulgation of laws that safeguard the rights and privileges of disabled persons; and the formation of academic societies of medical rehabilitation. This paper first considers these three developments and then examines how they have influenced the evolution of psychiatric rehabilitation in China.

Recruitment into psychiatry is perceived as problematic in the UK but the paper by Goldacre and colleagues in this issue of the Journal shows that recruitment of new UK graduates has altered little over 35 years. Sources of psychiatry's malaise should be sought in its changing focus and the quality, rather than quantity, of its recruits.

The following study was made for the Department of Psychological Medicine at Guy's Hospital in London in May, 1933. The purpose of the study was to investigate the present condition of the first hundred patients who attended the Department in 1931. Some of the findings will be compared with those from a similar study made in New York.

Peter Scott's (1975) characterisation of the concept of dangerousness as potentially dangerous in itself could not be more relevant than today. The principal focus of mental health policy over the last six years has been the care and treatment of seriously mentally ill people and mentally disordered offenders, and central to the successful care of the former and many of the latter is the competent assessment of the risk they pose: mostly to themselves, but occasionally to others.

This phase of the study was concerned only with the 93 parasuicides already described in Part I. It was designed to ascertain their knowledge of help-giving services, and to elucidate their attitudes towards help-seeking both in general and in the specific context of their parasuicidal behaviour.

At Dr. Williams' request I have conducted during the past six months a few experiments with the galvanic battery in mental diseases. Thinking the results of these observations will be of service to those who intend pursuing this branch of study, with his permission I take the liberty of recording them.