Looking backward to our Civil War, one is strongly impressed with the fact that the present volume, one of the earliest works of its kind to appear in book form, deals largely with psychiatry and functional nervous diseases, whereas during and after the American conflict the most important contributions to neurology related to organic disease, especially as illustrated by the work of Weir Mitchell and his collaborators on injuries of nerves. This is the more interesting when it is remembered that Mitchell not very long after the close of the Civil War became the most prominent exponent of functional neurology, from the diagnostic and therapeutic sides. To him the profession the world over has been indebted for the development of new views as to the nature of neurasthenia and hysteria and new methods for combating these disorders. In this fact is to be found matter for thought. Those who handled best the neuropsychiatric problems of the present war were in large part qualified not merely by a knowledge of psychology and psychiatry, but far more by a thorough training in organic neurology. The problems of psychiatry can be grasped fully only by those who have a fundamental knowledge of the anatomy, physiology, and diseases of the nervous system. Dr. Southard, preëminently a neuropathologist, is well grounded in organic neurology, and shows at every turn his capabilities for considering the neuroses, psychoses, and insanities from the standpoint of the neurologist. Moreover, he clearly shows training and insight into the problems of non-neurological internal medicine. The ideal method of training a student for neuropsychiatric work--if one had the opportunity of directing his course from the time of his entry into medicine--would be to see to it, after a good grounding in the fundamental sciences like anatomy, physiology, and chemistry, that medicine and surgery in their broadest phases first received school and hospital attention; that the fields of neurology, pure and applied, were then fully explored; and that psychology and psychiatry received late but thorough consideration. When after America’s entrance into the world war the writer assisted in preparing medical reserve officers for neuropsychiatric service, those men did best both during their postgraduate work and in base hospitals and in the field, who had built from the bottom after the manner indicated.