During the past three years some clinical applications of corticotrophic hormone have been studied, and in this paper is described a form of involutional melancholia in which hypopituitarism and secondary hypoadrenalism are factors. Nine such cases were treated with corticotrophic hormone; in addition two cases of pituitary cachexia in young women were similarly treated.

G. A. Levvy in 1940 (Biochem. J., 34, 73) published from the Department of Pharmacology, University of Edinburgh, a new method for the estimation of barbiturates in blood, claiming that his technique gave results accurate to a 20 per cent. error or less for quantities of 1.0 mgm. or more in 20 c.c. of blood. After studying this method at first hand we have carried out a number of estimations in cases undergoing prolonged narcosis with somnifaine, and studied the blood levels of barbiturates in patients under medication with soluble barbitone and phenobarbitone, a total of 200 estimations having been made.

It is now generally agreed that a fuller understanding of psychotic conditions associated with alcohol can only be achieved by taking into account the whole of the psychosomatic make-up of the individual, rather than by emphasizing any specifically poisonous properties of alcohol.

Meduna introduced the cardiazol treatment of schizophrenia, following an observation of the supposed rarity of the coexistence of epilepsy and schizophrenia and an observation of improvement in two schizophrenics who developed convulsions. Since then other drugs akin to cardiazol have been introduced, and recently electrically induced convulsions have been tried. It is generally agreed that there are certain complications and many objections to the use of cardiazol as a convulsant. Extreme apprehension and fear of treatment are present in almost every case. In some cases the patients' apprehension is so great that they decline treatment, saying that their dread of it makes them worse. It is a great obstacle preventing co-operation in the treatment. The other complications are the dislocation of the jaw, shoulder or hips, fractures of the arms or leg, sometimes the thigh, fracture of the spine and decalcification; cerebral haemorrhage and rarely lung abscesses and embolism have been reported.

By thiocyanate compounds is meant a group of salts of thiocyanic acid (HCNS). Together with compounds of glycuronic and sulphuric acids, these salts are products of several detoxication processes. In the urine they are the end-products of the detoxication of substances formed during the breakdown of protein.

The evaluation of suicide varies with the number of specified aspects employed. Yet none of them is able to offer a predictability of the suicide. Psychiatry acknowledges the fact that suicide is a non-specific symptom, accompanying certain mental disorders, and consequently uses precaution without selective prediction. Psychopathology looks upon the suicidal individual as one who identifies himself with his love object and directs reproaches and aggression against the introjected love object; in the suicidal act he kills the introjected person (Schilder). This only gives the structure analysis of the individual case, and the prediction “the greater the aggression the greater the danger of suicide” does not enable a generalized predictability. Sociological studies offered explanation for statistical coincidences (Durkheim) but failed in construction of a prediction.