The choice of my subject for this address has been determined by two factors: firstly, the precedent set by many Presidents of the Royal Medico-Psychological Association, when, as medical superintendents of modern mental hospitals which have emerged from ancient asylums, they spoke fascinatingly of their institutions' more remote past. Secondly, it has always been a cause for regret that I was not able to complete the centennial cycle in a book which I published eight or nine years ago entitled, A Critical Review of the Mental Hospitals in the Punjab from 1840 to 1930. It would be possible now, in this year of grace 1939, to hold a psychiatric centenary and to publish a new, revised and up-to-date edition, but the contents of a volume cannot be conveniently condensed into a few pages of typescript. All that can be done is to indicate retrospectively some of the ups and downs of the past century, to paint rapidly some of the high-lights and shadows which have alternately illuminated and darkened the history of psychiatry in this province. So if my recital seems disjointed, if there is little logical connection between one silhouette and the next, if there appears to be a flight of ideas, I beg that you will not regard this address as more maniacal than chairmaniacal.