Fifteen years ago there was no organized effort in any nation to combat mental disease and defect. Conditions in institutions for the insane and feeble-minded had advanced little since the time when "Bedlam" was first contracted from "St. Mary's of Bethlehem," an English asylum. The idea of forestalling and preventing the development of mental disorders was a novelty.
About 1900 a young man not long out of the university had an attack of amnesia (loss of memory occurring in some forms of insanity) and wandered about the country suffering harrowing vicissitudes for three...