The attitude of the American public toward preventive medicine, until a rather recent date, might be expressed in a paraphrase of the celebrated remark of Pinckney: "Millions for cure, but not one cent for prevention." While something along preventive lines has been done in recent years, it has been in the way of isolated personal effort, and we do not believe that there has been as yet any widespread appreciation of the necessity for preventive rather than curative medicine, even among the more intelligent of the general public. Physicians, and others who come into contact with the sick, realize that there are at present two classes of patients whose plight is especially distressing, those with advanced tuberculosis, and those with incipient insanity.
It is undoubtedly true that some interest has recently been aroused regarding the problem of the insane or nearly insane. The remarkable work of Beers,1 "A Mind