Brian Barraclough interviewed Sir William Trethowan at his home on 23 August 1983.

While not claiming any record, the Tribunal held on 4 November 1983 at Springfield Hospital to hear an appeal against detention under Section 2 of the 1983 Mental Health Act must have been among the first. The case is instructive as it illustrates the difficulties which may arise in obtaining the full facts for presentation in the short time which is available under the new legislation.

Birley (1981) has quoted Whitehead as saying ‘a science which hesitates to forget its founders is lost’. On the other hand, however, Hunter and MacAlpine (1963) noted that ‘the historical study of psychiatry, unlike that of medicine, is inseparable from the appreciation of its current problems', and that ‘just as it is the historical and biographical method which the psychiatrist adopts when faced with the problem of the individual patient, so the historical approach may be expected to throw light on the wider problems of psychiatry by laying bare their roots'. Certainly, since taking up appointment as librarian of the Institute of Psychiatry I have been surprised at the awareness of professional history shown by senior staff who I would have expected to be totally absorbed in day-to-day minutiae. A brief note in a specialized journal (Guha, 1983) elicited a considerable correspondence from psychiatric librarians who had noticed the same interest. It is, perhaps, unfortunate that historical resources in psychiatry are somewhat scattered, so that there is no one central archive or library to act as a focus for research in this area.

The 1984 meeting of the Biological Council, Co-Ordinating Committee for Symposia on Drug Addiction, ‘Control and Manipulation of Calcium Movement’, will be held from 30 April to 1 May 1984 at the Royal Institution, London W1. Information: Mrs J. Kruger, c/o Department of Pharmacology, St Thomas's Hospital Medical School, London SE1 7EH.

The Autumn Quarterly Meeting was held in London on 17 and 18 November 1983 at the Institute of Psychiatry, under the Presidency of Professor Kenneth Rawnsley.