Courage and Vision

arrangements for physical illness. Patients are to be admitted without formality?so that even voluntary status is an unnecessary concept: safeguards and standards of individual care are to be those that any doctor or hospital authority would naturally employ. The needs of the patient are more important in determining the type of hospital he goes to than scientific classifications. All this means the repeal of the previous laws and the drafting of a new Act. As a guide to fresh thinking, the Commission has recommended a new classification?into three groups of patients : (a) mentally ill, (b) psychopathic and (c) severely subnormal. There is much to be said for this, and for encouraging the discrimination between the highgrade defectives who would come in group (b) and the lowgrade who will be classed as severely subnormal; on the other hand the abolition of the term "mental deficiency" which is recommended, will embarrass others besides the authors of textbooks with this title.