Psychosomatic Diagnosis.

This is a book by one of the pioneers in psychosomatic medicine. For years the author and her colleagues have followed and studied patients with somatic illnesses and have elicited pertinent psychologic data which they feel have enabled them better to understand the picture of the patient's illness, with facilitation of more judicious diagnostic and therapeutic procedures. The book is devoted to a description of experiences with 1,600 patients, many of whom were observed for as long as twelve years. The syndromes included in this study are hypertensive cardiovascular disease; coronary occlusion; rheumatic fever, with and without cardiac and arthritic involvement; diabetes; anginal syndrome, and cardiac arrhythmias. In an attempt to obtain suitable control patients, the author decided to utilize patients with fracture but soon found that there were psychologic aspects to their problems also. She therefore included them in this series, having to be satisfied with contrasting the various