In this slight volume are reprinted six papers read at the dedication, on May 17, 1946, in Waverly, Massachusetts, of the Laboratory for Biochemical Research at the McLean Hospital, the mental disease department of the Massachusetts General Hospital. As the first in this series of addresses, Cecil K. Drinker contributes a dignified historical survey of past researches at the McLean Hospital, where, at the turn of the century, Otto Folin undertook a monumentally conceived but unfinished study of disorders of cerebral metabolism.