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The article examines the psychiatric practice and profession in Kuwait. Neuropsychiatric patients were usually taken to a mullah or teacher who will blow on him in a prescribed ritualistic manner or write certain words on paper which will be wrapped in cloth and suspended on a string from the patient's neck or arms. By 1945, the first mental hospital was established with from the conversion of an old prison with staff consisting of eight psychiatrists. The economic and general medical situation of the country

A series of 191 male patients. 2 Kuwaitis and 189 non-Kuwaiti immigrants from the Middle East. with cement dermatitis, is reported. On the first visit 108 patients had already passed into the chronic stage and 40%, showed an irregular nummular pattern. On patch testing, all 191 patients reacted positively to 0.5% potassium dichromate but only 13 of them reacted to 5% cobalt chloride, which incriminated the chromates as the significant allergen in cement dermatitis in Kuwait. Of the 191 patients. only 16 had suffered from transient dermatitis in their countries of origin. Seventy-seven of the remaining 175 patients came in contact with cement for the first time in Kuwait, whereas the other 88 patients had never had dermatitis in their countries of origin, in spite of long contact with cement. Of 112 patients who were followed up for a period longer than 2 years, 84 (75%) were observed to have clinical exacerbation between April and mid-November each year. The curve describing the latter was found to he a direct function of the curve obtained for the temperature monthly means. The rising humidity during September each year overtook the high temperature. which probably provoked excessive perspiration and thus favoured the leaching of chromate ions by the integument. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article focuses on the trends in the components of population growth in the Arab countries of the Middle East. It is quite true that apart from the United Arab Republic, which has a long series of censuses, relatively good vital statistics, and a number of demographic surveys, most of the countries have only a little information to offer to the student of demography. Lebanon, one of the most developed of these countries, does not have even one modern census; and registration of births and deaths there is so deficient that published data are of very little use. The same is more or less true about registration in Jordan, Syria, and Iraq. Jordan and Syria are awaiting termination of the tabulation processes of their first modern censuses, but Iraq, with two censuses al- ready taken, is much richer in this respect. The city of Kuwait has more foreigners than Kuwaitis, with the latter numbering only 41 percent of the city's population. Judging from the rural-urban and occupational distributions of the population, Iraq is, like her neighbors, mainly rural.

Focuses on the status of the nursing profession in Kuwait. Demand of health services; Impact of education on the development of society; Provision of nursing care, control, and cure of disease; Source of supply of national nurses.