The opening of Preface
This compilation was begun in the preparedness atmosphere of the U. S. Army Neuropsychiatric Training School at Boston, 1917-18. This particular school had to adapt itself to the clinical material of the Psychopathic Hospital. Although war cases early began to drift into the wards (even including some overseas material), it was thought well to supplement the ordinary “acute, curable, and incipient” mental cases of the hospital wards and out-patient service with representative cases from the literature.
As time wore on, this “preparedness” ideal gave place to the ideal of a collection of cases to serve as a source-book for reconstructionists dealing with neuroses and psychoses. Shortage of medical staff and delays incidental to the influenza epidemic held the book back still further, and, as meantime Brown and Williams had served the immediate need with their Neuropsychiatry and the War, it was determined to make the compilation the beginning of a case-history book on the neuropsychiatry of the war, following in part the traditions of various case-books in law and medicine.