The most encouraging aspect of the book, to this reviewer, is already implicit in the title. "Practical Training" is surely the aspect of therapy which seems likely in the present state of our knowledge to offer most promise for the amelioration of the lot and the useful function of the severely handicapped child. As was amply demonstrated at the most recent meeting of the American Academy of Cerebral Palsy in November 1966, regimes of "therapy" which claim to be capable of a fundamental alteration of the natural processes underlying established mental defect and cerebral palsy as yet merit merely the verdict of "not proven".
This little book, as indeed is true for all publications from the Spastics Society, is stimulating and provocative. This is, however, not to say that the theories and practices it invokes should automatically be accepted as being of undoubted validity.
In passing, it seems rather unnecessary