accomplishments has been the publication of a very successful quarterly magazine, "Mental Hygiene," which was undertaken in 1917 and has long since passed the experimental stage. A summary of its activities would not be complete without a reference to the valuable work which the committee has done in standardizing the reports made of institutions and compiling accurate statistics relating to mental diseases and defects which will be of inestimable value to all who are interested in the progress of psychiatry in this country. State mental hygiene societies now exist in Alabama, California, Connecticut, the District of Columbia, Georgia, Illinois, Indiana, Iowa, Kansas, Louisiana, Maryland, Massachusetts, Maine, Mississippi, Missouri, North Carolina, Oregon, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island, Tennessee and Virginia. The committee on mental hygiene in New York is a department of the State Charities Aid Association, which has been actively interested in matters relating to the care and treatment of the insane for many years. The chief purposes of the state organizations have been officially described as follows:—[43] "To work for the conservation of mental health; for the prevention of mental diseases and mental deficiency and for improvement in the care and treatment of those suffering from nervous or mental diseases or mental deficiency." The interest of the public is stimulated by pamphlets, reports and publications of various kinds, mental hygiene exhibits of an educational nature, public lectures, mental hygiene conferences, etc. The local societies have as a definite object, moreover, the encouragement of[44] "(a) Out-patient departments for mental cases in connection with hospitals for mental diseases and general hospitals, and independent of either of these agencies, such, for instance, as dispensaries and mental hygiene clinics, (b) Systematic psychiatric as well as psychological examination of school children, (e) Provision for incipient and emergency cases in psychopathic wards of general hospitals, (d) Psychopathic hospitals in which cases of mental disorder may be treated in their earliest and most curable stages and where practical work in prevention and social service may be done, (e) Increased institutional provision for the feebleminded and epileptic." One of their most important objects is the enactment of laws in the various states which will take care of the insane pending commitment out of the hands of the poor authorities and delegate it to health officers or physicians. As Dr. William L. Russell[45] has pointed out, the mere provision of institutional care for the mental diseases of a community is not the only thing to be considered, "Unless the vital issues occasioned by mental disorders in the homes, the schools, the industries, and in social relations are intelligently grasped and dealt with by means of the state system, state institutions are liable to be looked upon as a resource which is only to be appealed to when complete