As the result of an intimate personal knowledge of the subject, acquired during an extended hospital residence as a patient in both public and private institutions, Clifford W. Beers, having recovered his health, resumed his place in the world profoundly impressed with the feeling that the question of mental diseases as a public health problem was one which demanded immediate consideration. In no position financially to institute a campaign for the purpose of interesting the public in the importance of topics which had not been made the subject of general discussion in the past, he was confronted with the necessity of securing the cooperation and support of persons who had the means to launch such an undertaking. With this object in view he wrote his book—"A Mind That Found Itself,"[38] now in its fourth edition and destined, to use the words of the "American Journal of Insanity,"[39] "to become one of the classics of psychological literature." There is some question as to the accuracy with which Mr. Beers analyzed the experiences through which he had passed. Although there is no reason for questioning his mental condition when the book was written, his conclusions were apparently formulated when he had not as yet had sufficient time in which to readjust himself and recover his perspective. Some of his viewpoints certainly reflect a morbid coloring of which he was probably unconscious, although at the time he recognized in himself "symptoms hardly distinguishable from those which had obtained eight months earlier when it had been deemed expedient temporarily to restrict my freedom." His work was referred to as an "autopathography" by Farrar,[40] who made a detailed study of the various psychological trends manifested. These are more or less immaterial. The interesting feature of his book is the elaborate description of a common but exceedingly important psychosis written by a well educated observer with a collegiate training. Its greatest value, however, lies in the fact that he brings home to us so graphically the overwhelming importance of the personal element so often overlooked by those who are accustomed to dealing with mental cases in large numbers. "It carries the reader away from the technical dissertations, and brings him face to face with the feelings and reactions of a distorted mind, showing him the patient as a human being with a sentient soul and not as a case."[41]