The Inheritance of Mental Diseases.

Heredity in Nervous and Mental Disease. A Series of Investigations and Reports by the Association for Research in Nervous & Mental Disease. Volume III [1923]. Cloth. Price, $3.75. Pp. 332, with 48 illustrations. New York: Paul B. Hoeber, Inc., 1925. Dr. Myerson's book is divided into two parts. The first seven chapters constitute a summary of our present knowledge of mental diseases, presented in a simple manner, such as will appeal particularly to the general practitioner, and inclining largely to minimizing the importance of heredity in the onset of mental diseases. The second part of the volume concerns an analysis of 130 families studied at the Taunton State Hospital, with particular relation to the inheritance of mental defect. Myerson is convinced as a result of his study that it is rare, indeed, that a mental disease persists unaltered for more than two generations, and that it is the tendency of