Dr Post has been known to generations of students of psychiatry passing through The Maudsley Hospital, London, as a clinician and clinical teacher. He retired in July 1978.

Response to a token economy was assessed in male chronic schizophrenic in-patients who were given, in a double-blind cross-over trial, pimozide (up to 20 mg daily) or chlorpromazine (up to 1,000 mg daily), each for three months. After six months there was little change in the patients' mental state, but general ward behaviour and token-rewarded target behaviours improved significantly. There were no statistically significant between-drug differences, but the trend was that general ward behaviour, but not token-rewarded behaviour, improved more on pimozide. The patients who showed initiative and cooperated best with staff were those whose token-rewarded behaviour was most satisfactory.

George W. Henry's Sex Variants, published in 1941, presents the frustrating problem of having a valuable body of data which is inaccessible because it is not extracted statistically. It was originally brought out in two volumes and contained close to two hundred pages. It consisted of extensive case histories on 40 male and 40 female homosexuals carefully studied psychiatrically and medically. Each history was accompanied by a chart of the family pedigree. The individuals comprising the study were volunteers, mostly from the professional classes, and in age varied from 20 to about 40 years. Interviews were open-ended as well as by questionnaire and were repeated two years later for validation.

I am not a historian, a mere dabbler in history, but the figures of the past have always intrigued me. Psychiatry lives in the shadow of the 19th century, both in terms of its architecture and of its theories. It is not too difficult to give oneself déjà vu feelings about psychiatry, and to see its ‘progress' as a circular tour. But what of it ? In that way we revisit all sorts of old friends, provided we meet them as they really were, and not as dusty images, mouldering statues, ancient deities or foolish fond old men.