This is a summary of the views and findings of Professor Karl Kleist and his co-workers. It is based on a series of papers published by members of the Frankfort-am-Main University Psychiatric Clinic from 1939 to 1951.

These papers are the result of follow-up studies carried out on patients who had been admitted to the Frankfort Clinic between 1920 and 1953. These patients had been diagnosed as suffering from one of Kleist's special forms of schizophrenia.

Vincent van Gogh was born at Zundert (Province of Noord Brabant) in 1853, the eldest son of a minister of the Protestant church. We know little of his childhood years; he is described as a rather headstrong boy, but not abnormally so, his sister (1) pictures him as a great nature-lover and rather an introvert. His mother, a sensible and strongminded woman, handled him with indulgence, his father, by nature a kindly man, could be stern and forbidding, yet all his children including Vincent adored him. He loved his brother, Theo, quite as much, “who had inherited his father's name and his heart's goodness”.

May I, in the first place, thank you most sincerely for the honour you have done me by electing me as your President during the coming year. Whilst the names of my distinguished predecessors enhance this honour in my eyes, at the same time I cannot help a feeling of humility and inadequacy at the thought of attempting to follow in the footsteps of those illustrious members of our profession whose names shine ever more brightly as the march of time reveals more clearly their contribution to our specialty and to the welfare of the mentally ill.

This Address tonight will mostly concern psychiatric treatment, and it must be quite exceptional, I think, for those of us, still in our late forties, to have lived through such a revolution in treatment as we have seen in the last twenty years in this country. In this revolution I believe we have seen Great Britain emerge as one of the countries now leading the world in the skilled, humane and all-round treatment of her mentally ill patients. There is obviously still very much that needs to be done, yet we must try not to underestimate what has already been achieved recently in this country.

Previous papers from this hospital have reported clinical, neuropathological and other studies on patients subjected to temporal lobectomy for epilepsy (Falconer, Pond, Meyer and Woolf, 1953; Hill, Falconer and Pampiglione, 1953; Meyer, Falconer and Beck, 1954; Mitchell, Falconer and Hill, 1954; Falconer, Hill, Meyer, Mitchell and Pond, 1955; Meyer and Beck, 1955; Meyer and Yates, 1955; Meyer, 1956). The detailed psychiatric changes following temporal lobectomy are the subject of this paper. Apart from individual case studies and short comments, the effects on personality of temporal lobe ablation have not so far been reported.

Reports on the use of Rauwolfia alkaloids in the treatment of the mentally disturbed and on the remarkable central properties of this group of agents have encouraged a trial of the effect of both mixed Rauwolfia alkaloids, and of reserpine in the management and treatment of the chronic psychotic patient.

When the Council greatly honoured me by their invitation to be the Maudsley Lecturer for 1956, my first concern was as to what subject I could choose for my remarks.

A survey of the literature on handicapped children reveals comparatively little on the subject of epilepsy.

Most of the articles dealing with cognitive functions have been concerned wholly or mainly with verbal intelligence as measured by tests of the “Binet” type. Those relating to behavioural or personality traits have been mainly impressionistic.

The purpose of this survey was to assess the intellectual and social status of 150 children of 73 certified mental defectives. It is proposed to discuss the mothers in this paper and the children in a further one. The mothers in this group were all at one time patients at the Fountain Hospital. Much of the initial work was done by Mrs. L. Mundy, the Senior Psychologist, who had already tested most of the mothers, and Miss Kerry, the social worker, who had maintained contact with many of the discharged mothers and their children. One of the main factors which have made the research easier has been the general good feeling towards the Fountain felt by our ex-patients. They want the Fountain in general and the Physician Superintendent in particular to know how they are and what they are doing. Dr. Hilliard's “somewhatunorthodox procedure with difficult cases” (1956) and his views on feeblemindedness have now become fairly generally accepted. His view that many of these women can work successfully in the community has been substantiated already. It is hoped that this survey will help to avoid the inhuman and expensive administration process whereby an allegedly feebleminded mother is permanently separated from her child.

The nomenclature of neurology is already so extensive and so chaotic that every proposed new term requires its apology and precise definition before being accepted—just as every term, new or old, should be weeded out, if it cannot be given a satisfactory definition.