The Nature and Cause of Phobias, with Special Reference to Syphilophobia Discussion.

DR. MARGARET RORKE said that, like the President, she felt a high appreciation of the address, from which she had learned a great deal. She feared that her knowledge of psychology was very much a matter of " trial and error " ; in her medical student days the curriculum did not include definite psychological training, such as present-day students received. She saw in her V.D. clinic a number of types of cases; it was a clinic for women and children. The phobia cases she saw were gonophobia and syphilophobia cases, but in people who had actually been infected. Probably the lecturer would say they were almost justifiable cases of phobia. There were cases of syphilis whose tests -had become satisfactory and were waiting for their discharge, or had actually been discharged. Such a woman might run back to the clinic five years later because of a tiny pimple having occurred on her face, or because her child had nettle-rash, and say, dramatically, " Well, here it is ! It has come back." One woman had been married five years, and had a child aged three. The woman had been discharged cured long before she married. Five years after marriage she returned to the clinic and said, " I have come back, I shall soon have a nervous breakdown, I am nearly insane, I have gonorrhoea." The conversation proceeded somewhat as follows: Have you any symptoms? No. Have you children? Yes, but I shall go mad. What will persuade you that you have not venereal disease ? Would more tests persuade you ? Was it your husband who infected you before marriage ? Certainly not, he is all right and healthy. Is there any-