Clinical Pharmacology (dilling)

(Pp. l-xvi+ 1-904. 120s). London: Bailliere, Tindall & Cassell, 1969. NINE years have elapsed since the last edition of Mayer-Gross, Slater and Roth's Clinical Psychiatry was published. During that time it maintained its position both as a standard text for graduate students of Psychiatry and as one of he major reference books on the subject. This new edition has enhanced its stature and has provided British psychiatrists with an upto-date and authoritative account of present day psychological medicine. The influence of the late Dr. W. Mayer-Gross on the content and orientation of the book is still clearly discernible. It is to our advantage that the best of German psychiatry should be kept before us, but the authors have also drawn attention to important work from other European countries, especially Scandinavia. Psychoanalysis, Pavlovian psychiatry, behaviourism and existentialism all receive attention. Administrative and legal psychiatry is well covered and reference to the Mental Health Act (N.I.) 1961 draws attention to its distinctive features. The main legal provisions for mental treatment in other European countries and that which obtains generally in the United States is described. A useful chapter on social psychiatry draws attention to a growing and increasingly important field. Psychiatry has yet to reach those lofty heights of certainty where contrary views are no longer tenable. Whilst some readers may find that they do not wholly subscribe to all the views expressed on such topics as the classification of depresion and the replacement of the term "hysteria" by its adjective, their opinions can be set against those so clearly expressed by the authors with resulting further enlibhtenment. The same applies to the question of treatment; which is a field characterised by its diversity of approach and emphasis, depending on the orientation of the particular psychiatrist. The detailed descriptions to be found in this book of the psychiatric concomitants of a wide variety of physical disorders is very useful especially when dealing with psychiatric problems referred from general hospital wards, but one looks in vain for a chapter entitled Psychosomatic Medicine. A short account of this field, in the reviewer's opinion, would have been useful especially for examination candidates. This book can be recommended with confidence not only to students of psychiatry as essential reading for higher degrees and the D.P.M., but to all those working in the specialty. J.G.G.