Incurable Physician: An Autobiography

reflects as much degree of social incapacity and disturbance as extent of psychopathological derangement. And through the ages the aim of physical treatments or restraint has been to remove socially unacceptable states or behaviour. Nothing shows this better than the breakdown ofGeorge III in 1788-9, the critical influence of which on the English political scene Dr. Derry examines in this book. He shows how the constitutional issues raised led to the break-up of the old Whig party although supported by the talent of Burke, Fox and Sheridan among others equally famous. That the Government emerged triumphant against the demand for a Regency was no less due to Pitt's political astuteness and the therapeutic confidence of the Reverend Dr. Francis Willis than to the remitting nature of the King's illness. Among the other royal physicians Dr. Richard Warren stands out for his adherence to the party of the Prince of Wales; the author suggests that his Whiggish views may have overshadowed his otherwise admirable prognostic acumen. But the diagnosis of manic-depressive insanity, arrived at only on the history of recovery and recurrence, and by ignoring many interesting and unexplained clinical features, will no longer do: the illness of America's last king deserves to be brought into line with modern psychiatric concepts. RICHARD HUNTER