The 120th year of our Association's existence is nearing its end and we are approaching the actual 120th anniversary of its foundation. Through the kindness of the Management Committee we are able to meet at its birthplace, Gloucester, and to visit the hospital where it was conceived and brought into existence. At that time known as the Gloucestershire General Lunatic Asylum, and now as Horton Road Hospital, it is one of the oldest buildings continuously in use for the care of the mentally ill.

Kraepelin's diagnostic classification of the endogenous psychoses received world-wide acceptance, but today it is generally considered to have failed and is at times rejected by some workers with a few scornful words. This is not due to Kraepelin's own work but is the result of the way in which his successors have used his concepts. Kraepelin himself was not satisfied with the rough division of the endogenous psychoses into the two forms of manic-depressive insanity and schizophrenia, or as he termed it, dementia praecox. He, in fact, never ceased trying to isolate more disease entities. Thus, for example, he differentiated a large number of special forms of schizophrenia. Although he defined the two major groups of endogenous psychoses, this did not mean that he limited the number of diagnostic categories. On the contrary, he investigated all special forms of mental illness very carefully. If he saw a clinical picture which was unknown to him he would say, “So far I do not know this clinical picture, we should describe it adequately, perhaps other cases will occur as well, which will allow the isolation of a characteristic clinical picture.”

The paraphrenias raise a number of problems common to many other disorders in the field of psychiatry, and their solution might therefore advance knowledge in a number of directions. The relationship between paraphrenic, paranoid and schizophrenic illness has long been disputed, and no view at present commands general acceptance. It has seemed to us that these controversies have often turned upon unacknowledged assumptions as to whether clinical, prognostic or genetic criteria, or all of these, were to be employed to decide the issue.

Jealousy is more than a psychiatric symptom. Its language is universal: the conduct and feelings of the jealous man and woman have repeatedly drawn the attention of the great observers of human nature, the moralists and the philosophers as well as the poets and the novelists. They have, on the whole, described the reaction more successfully than they have defined it. Even the most celebrated definitions—Descartes' “kind of fear related to a desire to preserve a possession” or Spinoza's “mixture of hate and love”, for example— merely illustrate the complexity of a term whose many nuances of meaning can be detected in its roots. The English adjective “jealous” and the noun “jealousy” are derived respectively from the French “jaloux” and “jalousie”, both taken from the old Provençal “gilos”; “gilos” in turn may be traced back to the vulgar Latin adjective “zelosus” which comes from the late Latin “zelus” and so indirectly from the Greek ζηλoς. In its transmission the word has thus been debased. It has ceased to denote “zeal” or “ardour”; the “noble passion” which stood opposed to “envy” for the Greeks has acquired a pejorative quality. In modern German the distinction is preserved verbally, “Eifersucht” having been formed from the original “Eifer” (zeal) and the suffix “-sucht”, which is cognate with “siech”, meaning “sickly”. Amorous jealousy claims associations of its own. During the seventeenth century the French word “jalousie” acquired the meaning of “blind” or “shutter”; in this sense it entered the English language as a noun in the early nineteenth century; the transmutation is thought to have signified a jocular reference to the suspicious husband or lover who could watch unobserved behind the jalousie; the Italian word “gelosia” is used in this way as early as the middle of the sixteenth century. In the Scandinavian languages separate words designate amorous jealousy. (1) The Swedish “svartsjuk”, literally “black sick”, is taken from an old expression which identified jealousy with the wearing of black socks; the Danish “skinsyg”, “afraid of getting skin (a rebuff)”, harks back to an old link of jealousy with skin which may in turn have been connected with hose or socks. (2) The origin of the colours which are traditionally employed to depict jealousy, especially black, yellow and green, is obscure.

This work was originally started because attention had been drawn to the high suicide rate in Hampstead. Geffen and Warren (1) originally reported this high rate. During the last ten years it has varied between 20 and 30 per 100,000 inhabitants (see Table I). It also compares with the suicide death rate of 10 per 100,000 for the whole community.

The introduction of the new psychopharmacological agent haloperidol (R 1625, “Serenase”R) to psychiatric therapy provides an interesting supplement to the chemotherapeutic outfit available for the treatment of psychoses. It seems to be the first compound possessing neuroleptic powers of at least the same degree as the drugs used so far, in spite of a chemical structure quite different from reserpine and the drugs of the phenothiazine group.

Since the introduction of methotrimeprazine (Veractil) to psychiatry in 1956 by the French workers, Sigwald, Henne, Bouttier, Raymoneaud and Quetin (1), this drug has been used here and on the Continent for the treatment of various psychiatric conditions with varying and inconsistent success. A rapid review of some examples in the literature will suffice to illustrate this. Deschamps and Madre (2) stated that the drug was more rapidly effective and more powerful than chlorpromazine (Largactil). Gayral et al. (3) reported on their findings in 409 patients, most of them (304) out-patients, and the majority (316) with depression: it was considered that Veractil was not an adequate substitute for electroplexy (E.C.T.) in depression. Larue and Gosselin (4) treated 82 patients with a variety of disorders including 2 cases of trigeminal neuralgia, with marked success. Letailleur, le Borgne and Lebrun (5) reported the side-effects of drowsiness and fainting to be relatively common, but with no true Parkinsonism, in a series of 75 patients of which they regarded 36 as cured and 25 as improved. Baruk, Launay and Roberti (6) claimed good results, not only in depression, as stated by others, but also in obsessive and digestive neuroses; and in patients with syndromes in which other neuroleptics were usually without effect. Deschales, Lanteri-Lausa and Fargeon (7) however concluded that Veractil was no more efficacious than other neuroleptics though they preferred it for depressives: it could usefully be combined with E.C.T. in these cases but it could not replace it. Baker and Thorpe (8) found no difference in comparison with Largactil while treating deteriorated schizophrenics, except that the effective dose of Veractil was only two-thirds that of Largactil. Leitch and Seager (9) found no statistical significance in a placebo-controlled study comparing Veractil, Largactil, acepromazine and promazine. But Quinn, Johnston, Latner and Kiloh (10) again reported a 42 per cent. clinical improvement in patients given Veractil compared with Largactil and a placebo in 146 schizophrenics using the working capacity in males and the degree of deterioration in females as pointers for assessment.

Resort to the use of phantasy in conditions of stress in individuals and in groups was a preoccupation of the author in 1944 (1). The fact that the subject was in mind occasioned the discovery of a “psychological epidemic”. The affairs to be described sound trivial, but have been thought needing of record as a factual account of group infantilisms which, although doubtless of common occurrence, are not much documented. The passage of fifteen years was thought proper to minimize chance of recognition of any people concerned, but this does not affect the validity of the observations. At the expense of some obscurity, cyphers are used to designate individuals and other clues to identity have been avoided.

Witchcraft, the extra-natural interference in the welfare of the community by women, has long since ceased to be a source of major concern in Western society. In many other areas of the world, however, the witch remains a very active and vital image in the consciousness of the people, This is certainly true for the Yoruba*—a negro group occupying large areas of Nigeria, Dahomey and Togoland along the north-west coast of Africa. With the Yoruba (irrespective of his social level, religion or education), belief in the witch and in her powers is all but universal.