Introduction In the functioning of a psychiatric outpatient department in a large city, where the community needs for psychiatric care are considerably greater than the resources of the clinic to deal with them psychotherapeutically, we are constantly concerned with the discovery and development of additional methods and means of helping emotionally sick people. Recent work at Yale,1confirmed for our population at this clinic,2has pointed up the marked difficulties in attempting to deal with psychiatrically unsophisticated persons of lower socioeconomic class by psychotherapeutic means. The use of drugs in the management of many patients has long been a customary practice and has yielded varying, and often highly personalized, clinical impressions of their efficacy. With the discovery of the "tranquilizing" effects of reserpine in hypertensive patients3and in psychotic patients,4and with the knowledge of the toxic effects of the drug, it became, therefore, of interest