No abstract

President's Address MEDICALJOURNAL 133 rewarming process to see the heart begin to contract and continue the circulation, the patient returning to normal within a matter of minutes following the operation, a patient who, judged by our old standards, had apparently been dead for up to one hour. Yet this is exactly what happens, and many chronic invalids owe to these procedures not only restoration to almost normality but also prolongation of life.

No abstract

The automatic repetition of words heard (echolalia) and actions seen (echopraxia) has long been known to occur in certain psychotic states in cases of aphasia and in low-grade mental deficiency. Echographia was established as a sub-type of echopraxia (Pick, 1924). The similarity of the pathological echo-reactions with phenomena occurring normally in childhood during the early period of speech development was pointed out by Wyllie (1894) and Pick (1902), who studied them in aphasia. The most recent study dealing with echo-reactions is that of D. E. Schneider (1938), who described the syndrome echolalia, echopraxia, grasping and sucking. Most previous writers investigated echo-reactions either from the neurological or psychiatric point of view and not enough attention has been paid to the comparative aspect and to the question of a common underlying mechanism. In this study an attempt has been made to investigate that problem.

Dr. Kreitman and his associates, in a letter published in this column in June, ià §@6@ (pp. 746â€"7), declared the term ‘¿ attemptedsuicide' to be highly unsatisfactory because the great majority of people so designated were not in fact attempting suicide but simulating or mimicking it. They proposed the term ‘¿ parasuicide'instead. My belated response to the letter is not due to lack of interest but to the desire to let others have their say first. The only comment that has appeared to date came from Dr. Merskey