We have previously demonstrated, in small groups of patients receiving either electric convulsive treatments or imipramine therapy, changes in calcium metabolism associated with recovery from states of depression (5, 7). Other investigators have also reported somewhat unusual changes in calcium physiology among depressed patients or during the administration of antidepressant therapies. These include low cerebrospinal fluid calcium levels (4), changes in blood calcium during electric convulsive treatments (10), and alterations in bound and ionized fractions of blood calcium during imipramine therapy (3). It is the purpose of this report to describe and discuss the changes in urinary calcium excretion in the relatively large series of patients we have now acquired.

Kallmann (1953) studied the differences between uniovular twins discordant for schizophrenia and found there to be a definite superiority in physical strength and body weight in the unaffected twin. This paper is concerned with some aspects of the growth of psychotic boys, to determine if the inferiority noted by Kallmann is generally detectable.

Fetishism is relatively rare as a primary medical problem. Curran (1) describes only five cases in his series of 4,000 patients seen in private practice.

It is defined by Freud (2) as a condition “in which the normal sexual object is replaced by another which, though related to it, is totally unfit for the normal sexual aim”.

Many attempts have been made to measure some of the changes in various bodily functions that occur during the course of a depressive illness. These changes (and their responses to drugs) have been used in investigations that try to correlate such changes with the clinical syndromes of “endogenous” and “reactive” depressions (10). No reliable and valid correlations have, however, yet been found (4, 5).

The principal clinical features of this rare, familial disease are the triad of skeletal deformities, structural anomalies of the cardiovascular system, and mental subnormality.

The syndrome is attributed to a recessive gene, and Morquio (1929) held the view that the underlying pathology consisted of mucoid changes occurring in the cartilages in place of their normal calcification.

This report refers to investigations on a group of children in Smith Hospital, Henley-on-Thames (O'Gorman, 1958). Smith Hospital is a long-stay children's psychiatric unit, predominantly for children diagnosed as psychotic and requiring hospital care. In particular, children are admitted where it is thought that the home environment is a factor in the maintenance of the child's psychosis or where the child's disturbance is such that the parents are no longer able to cope with it.

Ospolot is tetrahydro-2-p-sulphamoylphenyl-1, 2 thiazine 1, 1-dioxide, with a structural formula: