Published bv the ?National .Federation ot Women s Institutes, 39 Eccleston Street, London, S.W.I. Price 6d.
lhis little booklet is designed to give to members of Women's Institutes " as detached an account as possible of the personal health services provided by the county councils."
Each of the various services described is illustrated by an account of how it is organised in one specific county c<nd for the " Mental Health Service" section, the county of Kent has been chosen in the case of work under the Lunacy and the Mental Treatment Acts, and Wiltshire in the case of mental deficiency work. To compress into a brief summary such essentially complicated activities is inevitably a difficult and unsatisfactory task, and we hesitate to criticise too freelj'. It does, however, seem a pity that certain inaccuracies are here printed, which will be undetected by any but those who are experts in this branch of social service and which may give a misleading impression. We refer particularly to the paragraph dealing with the need for more special schools and classes where the term " backward" is used in place of " feebleminded " and where it is not made clear that the failure to notify children leaving school is largely due to the restriction of notification to those who have attended "Special" schools. It would also seem a pity to quote statistics as long ago as 1929 when more upto-date ones could so readily have been procured. Moreover, in summarising the definitions of the various categories of mental defect, the necessity for compression has led to the sacrifice of accuracy, and the fact that the term " moral imbecile" was replaced in the 1927 Mental Deficiency Act by that of " moral defective " has been overlooked. Perhaps in a subsequent edition these defects in what otherwise is a very useful little publication, may be corrected. A. L. H.