The Welsh Division became a formal entity in September, 1972 with the election of Officers and an Executive Committee. The discussions preceding the setting up of the Divisional machinery were greatly facilitated by the fact that already a very high proportion of psychiatrists in Wales were members of the Welsh Psychiatric Society. This group had already been meeting for two weekends and two single day meetings every year since 1960 with a judicious mixture of clinical lectures and social activities. Discussions therefore centred less on how psychiatrists could be brought together than on how the new Division could be brought into being without losing the benefits of the Welsh Psychiatric Society with its enthusiastic supporters, financial assets and freedom of action and membership. In practice this appears to be working out well and the two organizations continue to flourish symbiotically. The Welsh Division has taken over the organization of some of the clinical meetings and the political functions, and the W.P.S. continues to arrange weekend clinical meetings and to permit a wider link up of professional people interested in psychiatry by its more open membership. The Society has also recently offered an annual prize in psychiatry to students of the Welsh National School of Medicine.

The Department of Health Circular HM(69)6, gave advice to Hospital Boards and authorities on the re-employment and training of women doctors. This paper outlines the results which its publication has had in the West Midlands and explains how it has enabled the author to train in psychiatry.

Shortly after the publication of HM(69)6, the former Birmingham Regional Hospital Board approved a scheme for the training and re-training of women doctors on a part-time basis.

The statement issued on 18 July 1975 by the DHSS reiterates what Dr. David Owen, Minister of State, said in the House of Commons on 25 June 1975 when the question of sterilization of a child under 16 was raised. This was that he had been advised that there were grounds for sterilizing children of 15 or younger. There were some cases where the procedure was undoubtedly necessary, as in the surgical treatment of some carcinomas. A more controversial situation was where a girl was pregnant and pregnancy at any stage of her life would carry grave risks to health. Termination of pregnancy would then be justified and sterilization might be advised at the same time. Then there were severe genetic conditions affecting a girl’s family where there was a high risk of any child the girl might bear suffering from that condition.

In all the contemporary discussion on drug misuse little attention has been paid to the use and abuse of minor analgesics. Over the past 30 years there has been a huge increase in the consumption of aspirin, phenacetin and codeine throughout the world, but only recently have clinicians fully awakened to the extent of the pathology which results from analgesic abuse. Analgesic-induced renal disease was first described in Switzerland in 1953 and for several years was thought to be confined to that country. However, increasing numbers of cases were reported from other countries throughout the 1960s, and eventually it was established that analgesic nephropathy was common in Britain (reviewed by Murray, 1974). Phenacetin was widely blamed for the nephrotoxicity, since it was the common constituent of nearly all the mixtures held to cause kidney damage, and consequently as from September 1974 phenacetin became available only on a doctor's prescription in Britain. The excessive ingestion of other common analgesics is not without risk. Paracetamol in overdosage may result in profound liver damage, while it is well known that aspirin may cause anaemia, gastro-intestinal haemorrhage and peptic ulceration.