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An acquaintance, an ancient gentleman who was an intimate of Theodore Roosevelt, told me that just inside his house in Oyster Bay, T.R. had a prominent sign which read: "If you are not an American what the hell are you doing here?" People usually laughed dutifully when they read the sign—they love to shine in the reflected image of the great and neargreat, the famous and infamous. The price of this reflection is often sycophancy. Thus, apparently, no one made an adverse comment until one day a guest asked T.R. what he meant —did he mean American by birth or by ideals, and if so to which ideals was T.R. referring? T.R. took offense: "If you don't know you are not an American so get the hell out of here."I was reminded of that ludicrous incident shortly after beginning this book, City on a Hill. While it discusses the

NIACIN THERAPY IN PSYCHIATRY. By A. Hoffer, PhD, MD. Price, $6.75. Pp XVI and 161, with no illustrations. Charles C Thomas, Publisher, 301-327 E Lawrence Ave, Springfield, Ill, 1962. RECENT ADVANCES IN BIOLOGICAL PSYCHIATRY, Vol 4. Edited by Joseph Wortis, MD. Price, $13.50. Pp 385, with no illustrations. Plenum Press, 227 W 17th St, New York, 1962. RECENT ADVANCES IN BIOLOGICAL PSYCHIATRY, Vol 5. Edited by Joseph Wortis, MD. Price, $13.50. Pp 380, with no illustrations. Plenum Press, 227 W 17th St, New York, 1963.Before the time of Pinel, Psychiatry was a hose-keeping job—or more correctly a punitive job not unlike that of running a penal institution. Thereafter it became a housekeeping job—more correctly a custodial one with better rapport with patients. With Freud it became a sacerdotal job—frequently one surrounded with the mysticisms of the various so-called dynamically oriented schools.Schools of thought are usually based upon plausible

Suicide is a dirty word in our civilization. So was syphilis—and was allowed to do its dirty work by suppression of its cognizance.I shall quote only one statistic: 18,000 suicides are reported a year in the United States. This figure will be clothed in glaring significance by comparing it to two facts: (1) the 35,000 deaths a year through motorcar accidents—while there is an outcry against traffic deaths, there is a suppression of information on death by suicide; and (2) our society considers suicide a disgrace, and therefore if a death can be ascribed to other causes, it is usually not reported as suicide.For example, newspaper accounts often report the death of a prominent person through accidental ingestion of an overdose of sleeping pills. The fact is that that is rather improbable: assuming that an individual has forgotten that he took a dose of a hypnotic only ten

No wonder Koestler's thesis in this book is that man acts out of his schizophysiology! Man can discern acts that are illogical, inconsistent, or bizarre—but his history tells the story of his illogical, inconsistent acts, and bizarre behavior. For example, if a prisoner under sentence of death attempts to kill himself the day before execution and almost succeeds, prison authorities will give him the best medical care available and postpone the execution until he has recovered so he can be hung in good health.Man professes love as a virtue and claims adherence to a deity as mentor and giver of all love. Nonetheless, man has been known to persecute, torture, and kill others who worship a variant of the same deity or who worship different deities, all in the name of the deity of love (the Albigensians, Huguenots, Jews, and other "heretics" can attest to that).Man seeks justice