COPYRIGHT, 1919, BY
W. M. LEONARD
To
THE NATIONAL COMMITTEE FOR
MENTAL HYGIENE
AND
ITS WORK IN
WAR AND PEACE
PREFACE
This compilation was begun in the preparedness atmosphere of the U. S. Army Neuropsychiatric Training School at Boston, 1917-18. This particular school had to adapt itself to the clinical material of the Psychopathic Hospital. Although war cases early began to drift into the wards (even including some overseas material), it was thought well to supplement the ordinary “acute, curable, and incipient” mental cases of the hospital wards and out-patient service with representative cases from the literature.
As time wore on, this “preparedness” ideal gave place to the ideal of a collection of cases to serve as a source-book for reconstructionists dealing with neuroses and psychoses. Shortage of medical staff and delays incidental to the influenza epidemic held the book back still further, and, as meantime Brown and Williams had served the immediate need with their Neuropsychiatry and the War, it was determined to make the compilation the beginning of a case-history book on the neuropsychiatry of the war, following in part the traditions of various case-books in law and medicine.
With the conclusion of the armistice, there is by no means an end of these problems. Peace-practice in neuropsychiatry is bound to undergo great changes and improvements, if only from the influx into the peace-community of many more trained neuropsychiatrists than were ever before available. This is particularly true in the American community by reason of the many good men specially trained in camp and hospital neuropsychiatry, both at home and in the A. E. F., through the enlightened policy of our army in establishing special divisions of the Surgeon-General’s Office dealing separately with those problems.
Though a book primarily for physicians, some of its material has interest for line-officers, who may see how much “criming” is matter for medical experts, by running through the boxed headings (especially of Sections [A] and [B]) and reading the simulation cases. As Chavigny remarks, “shooting madmen neither restrains crime nor sets a good example.”