In reviewing the enormous number of articles on all phases of acute epidemic encephalitis one cannot help being impressed by the lack of attention paid to children who have suffered from this disease. This is especially true of the important neuropsychiatric sequelae. Few articles deal exclusively with acute epidemic encephalitis in children. Happ and Blackfan,1 Happ and Mason,2 Grossman,3 Leahly and Sands,4 and recently Hohman5 have written on this subject, the two last named having confined their remarks to the psychiatric manifestations of this interesting and protean disease.
During the past few months seventeen patients have been referred to the neuropsychiatric clinic for examination, because of marked behavior abnormalities. Many of these patients were referred directly by the school authorities because they had been unmanageable and unable to progress in school. Frequently, they had disturbed the whole class, since they were very quarrelsome and impulsive