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Their objective is to put out booklets and talk to each other and maybe support a clinic that's open a few times a week or a few times a month on a local level. The funds raised nationly are so small that they can't do much with them once that amount of money is fractionated around the country.

Well, in any case, I think that the support of National Mental Health Committee through the last 14 or 15 years has been one of the best contributions that the Lasker Foundation has been able to make.

As a result of the Governors Conference in Detroit in February of '54, the Southern Governors held a conference in the fall of '54 at Booa Raton, to which both Florence Mahoney and Mike Gorman went, and they did a superb job. They persuaded the governors to pass a resolution stating that they would encourage their states, 18 Southern states, to support a central office for the promotion of more research and training in mental illness. Each state was expected to supply $80,?00 for the support of this office. Fortunately, an unbelievable and unforeseeable breakthrough in drug therapy occurred in '54--really in '53 but it got to be more generally known in '54--which has greatly aided the thinking of the governors and people in general about the hopefulness in this field.

In February of '54 Nathan Klein at the conference supported by the New York Academy of Science on the subject of the use of Serpasil in connection with high blood pressure revealed that Serpasil was also very helpful in the treatment of acute manic depressive states and even schizophrenia. Since this time,