This book is a carefully documented history of psychiatric care in Newfoundland, Canada, focusing on the Waterford Hospital and covering the period roughly 1800 to 1972. The work describes and analyses the emergence and development of psychiatric services in Newfoundland, relating them to international currents and trends in institutional psychiatry and to the particular Newfoundland social, political, and economic scene. Thus, while essentially an institutional history, it does not discuss the evolution of the hospital in isolation, but uses it as a vehicle to convey the larger story-the complex interplay of local and international pressures.