The present communication is a preliminary report on 12 certifiedcases suffering from insanity with epilepsy treated with solantoin, a preparation of sodium diphenyl hydantoinate. This paper also discusses the site of action of the drug, and the possible relationship between its excretion and toxic effects.

Since Meduna in 1934 introduced the treatment of schizophrenic states by induced epileptiform convulsions, a volume of literature has appeared on the use of cardiazol as convulsant. But although cardiazol proved immensely superior to the original camphor, it is not without some serious disadvantages. These led naturally to the search for further improvement in the convulsant agent, and it is with one of the successors to cardiazol, introduced by Walk and Mayer-Gross (1938), and known as azoman or triazol 156, that this record is concerned.

Within the last few years advances have been made in research in epilepsy which have resulted in new hope for the sufferer and physician alike.

It is just twenty years ago that I read a paper on the “Problem of Psychogenesis in Mental Disease” before this Society. William McDougall, whose recent death we all deplore, was in the chair. What I then said about psychogenesis could be safely repeated to-day, for it has left no visible traces, or other noticeable consequences, either in text-books or in clinics. Although I hate to repeat myself, it is almost impossible to say something wholly new and different about a subject which has not changed its face in the many years that have gone by. My experience, however, has increased and some of my views have matured, but I could not say that my standpoint has had to undergo any radical change. I am therefore in the somewhat uncomfortable situation of one who, on the one hand, believes that he has a well-founded conviction, but, on the other hand, is afraid to indulge in the habit of repeating old stories. Although psychogenesis has been discussed long ago, it is still a modern, even an ultra-modern, problem.

The difficulties inherent in reducing schizophrenic thinking to the conditions of an experiment have led to a variety of attacks upon the problem. Of these, the attempts to subject thinking disorders to methods of quantification have so far yielded little of value. That this has been the case can be readily understood when one considers what heterogeneity of psychopathology is included under the term “schizophrenia”. Moreover, the thought of schizophrenics is apparently of the same order of complexity as the thought of normal persons, and its qualitative characteristics are even less well known. Under present conditions the qualitative approach seems to promise a greater and more useful field. Where tests have been employed with advantage in studying schizophrenia it has been chiefly their by-products that have deserved attention.