Déjerine and Gauckler[30] have given an admirable account of the use of isolation in the treatment of neurasthenia and hysteria. They are careful to point out, however, that even in the case of civilian patients, with whom of course their treatise is concerned, “isolation, even accompanied by rest and overfeeding, is never enough.” It is merely an adjunct, though, under certain circumstances, a necessary one, of the treatment by persuasion. But “it would be irrational to look upon the isolation of neuropaths as a therapeutic necessity from which one might never depart. It only applies to particular cases.” In proceeding to define the class of civilian patients for whom such methods are appropriate they emphasise the value of isolation for those whose troubles are due to, or aggravated by, “a bad family environment.” In most cases the circumstances of the war-stricken soldier do not come within the categories which they suggest as justifying isolation. Moreover, most of the benefits which they attribute to this therapeutic measure, _i.e._, removal from home surroundings and from the particular worries and anxieties which have caused the mischief, are attained (as we have already pointed out) when the soldier is an inmate of a special—or, in fact, of any—hospital. When Déjerine and Gauckler proceed to define the different degrees in which the method of isolation may be practised; _viz._: (1) strict isolation; (2) absolute isolation from one’s family circle and environment, and (3) isolation from one’s family circle alone, or from one’s usual environment alone—it becomes clear that the treatment of every soldier who enters any hospital inevitably comes within the scope of categories 2 and 3. Even when writing of hysterical women these French physicians tell us that— “to show how slightly (their) experience has inclined (them) towards any systematic treatment of the psychoneuroses by isolation,” isolation has not seemed (to the doctors) to be necessary for “at least a third of the neuropathic women who have been cared for at the Salpêtrière. Again, it must be added that, of the patients admitted, a certain number have been received at the hospital and naturally submitted to the discipline which belongs to an isolation ward much more for humanitarian and social reasons than because absolute isolation seemed to be formally indicated.”[31]