The Waterbury Democrat., 1940-10-18

ment. It was the second free dispenss have been the third in the world. Its office was the corner of a drug store.
 Today the Boston Dispensary is the central unit of the New Eng land Medical Center, and has on its staff more than two hundred physicians and almost as many workers in the fields of social Serv- ice, nursing. dietetics, laboratory work, and other activities. Its clinics cover about every kind of medical need.
 In connection with the Joseph H. Pratt Diagnostic Hospital, the Float ing Hospital for children (which now floats in bricks next door to the Dispensary), and the Tufts Med ical School, it forms a center to which physicians and patients in all of northern New England can look for diagnostic and treatment help.
 In addition it offers "refresher" and "catch-up" short courses to physicians whose regular practice keeps them remote from the large centers and the latest medical de- velopments and sends out mem- bers of it's staff to distant places for consultation work and for featuring to local groups of doctors.
 It also carries on an extensive home visitation work in the crowd ed districts by which it is surround ed, and even in remoter sections of the city where there are poor people who are unable to pay for a doctor, and 56,402 such visits were made without charge to 28,487 patients in the year 1888.
 The institution of Group Psy- chotherapy was the idea of Dr. Jo- Seph H. Pratt, one of the most dis tinguished graduates of the Johns Hopkins Medical Schools, when, after many years of work as con- sulting specialist in Boston, he be- came chief of the Medical Clinic at the Dispensary.
 In addition to his private work with individual patients, his work as a consultant, his tasks as chief of the Medical Clinic, his duties in connection with the Tufts Medical School, and now his responsibilities as head of the Diagnostic Hospital, pr. Pratt finds time to bring to- gether patients who are suffering from psychoneurosis and to give them every week the benefit of his wide and deep knowledge and the infective inspiration of his forceful personality.
 It was on April Il. 1880, that three patients met with Dr. Pratt for the first session of what came to be called, as the result of remark made by one of them, the Class in Thought Control. There are now three of these classes meeting weekly, one in the morn ing, one in the afternoon, and one in the evening, each under diff ferent teacher. At the morning class there will be gathered together between 30 and 40 clinic patients in addition to private patients, visiting physicians, social workers, and other guests.
 When tonicS, SedativeS, physio- therapy, placebos and even opera tions fail to alleviate the patients symptoms" says Dr. Herbert l. Harris in a report upon the class method. The needs a long and thorough psychanamnesis and emo- tional re-education." That is what the class aims to do.
 Perhaps at this point a bit of definition will help the general reader. Physiotherapy is treatment of symptoms by natural forces such as heat, electricity, water, and fresh air. Psychotherapy is treatment by use of psychological laws and prin- ciples. A placebo is medicine which is prescribed merely for its psycho- logical effect, and which of itself has no curative value. A psych- anamnesis is a therapeutic examin- ation of the patients emotional life, past and present, so that both he and the physician who treats him may have thorough understanding of the conditions that led to the de- velopment of his symptoms. Emo tional re-education is the corrective that is applied to the patients faulty and harmful mental and emotional habits. A syndrome is a group or series of symptoms con- nected with certain condition of sickness.
 The result of the Class in Thought Control work, during the more than ten years of it's operation, has been to lead hundreds of suffering indi- viduals back into reasonably healthy psycically more robust, and more nearly normal habits of life. Start