A Handbook for Nurses.
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B.S., B.Sc.(Lond.), D.P.M. Faber. 4s. 6d. This little pocket book gives a brief, sensible and readable account of modern forms of physical treatment for mental disorder: a few pages are devoted to each of electro-convulsant therapy, insulin, modified and deep, prolonged narcosis, leucotomy, malaria and drugs.
There is no doubt that the book will be thus a very valuable one for nurses, both as an introduction to their work, and also as an easy reference book. There is, however, one criticism to be made and that is of the title. In his introduction, the author stresses in a few succinct, but all too short, phrases, the paramount importance of the general bearing of the nurse and of the atmosphere of the hospital:
and elsewhere it is true he mentions that the need for the comas of insulin should be only part of a general programme of sympathetic handling. But this is all, and in a book with this title it is far too little and, indeed, gives a wrong proportion to the young nurse. Dr Dax's views are well known and this is therefore surprising. Perhaps his book should have been called " Modern Physical Treatment " ? R.F.T.