THE SCHOOL OF MILITARY NEUROPSYCHIATRY

The School of Military Neuropsychiatry located at Lawson General Hospital, Atlanta, should arrest the interest of every fellow and member of the American Psychiatric Association. Each four weeks there passes through its portals a group of approximately thirty neurologists and psychiatrists who con stitute a cross-section of the present younger generation of practitioners of those special ties in these United States. They come to the school with widely vary ing backgrounds of training, aptitudes and interests. They represent the many schools of neuropsychiatric thought and practice the organicist, the psychobiological, the ana lytic and the Kraepelinian. They have been associated with laboratories, research centers, state or private hospitals, mental hygiene clinics, municipal courts, veterans' facilities, the United States Public Health Service, child guidance clinics, state welfare commis sions, penal or correctional institutions, and the United States Army, or have come from private practices. They have entered the army from all parts of the United States and have been assigned to stations located in some one of the nine scattered service commands or the Army Air Forces. Many of our student officers have had training in other countries. This recruitment, representing such di verse geographical scattering and from such varied training backgrounds, results in a cosmopolitan group. The students them selves frequently testify that the opportunity for such a group to live together for a month and to discuss each others problems in a common language, is one of the greatest benefits they derive from the course. The War Department directive establish ing the school limits the number in each class to from 30 to 50. The course runs for four weeks and one class succeeds an other without interruption. The first course started January 4, 1943. On April 24th the fourth class was graduated and on April 26th the fifth course opened. In the course of one year, thirteen classes will have been completed and a total of from 400 to 650 students will have been graduated. Because they do constitute such a representative cross section, these men are the ones who will carry the torch of neurology and psychiatry in the post-war era. We who have been dele gated to teaching positions in the school are appreciative of the responsibility laid upon us. Criticism has been made that four weeks is too short a time for a review of two such important subjects as psychiatry and neurol ogy. In reply it may be stated that the course is intended to be intensive and within the time allotted we present @o hours of instruc tion and application. When one remembers that, according to Ebaugh and Rymer, dur ing the third and fourth undergraduate years no medical school in the United States