Abstract
Mentally ill people have been avoided and abandoned by their families and public authorities for hundreds of years.
Present day abandonment includes the deployment of professionals from patients to paper; the destruction of availability and effectiveness of institutional facilities; the obfuscation of mental illness by captious, sematic criticism; the aspirations of paramedical and paraprofessional groups; and the subordination of the primary purpose of institutions and physicians to other objectives.
The nature of authority is discussed and the need for the treatment of mentally ill people to be based on the art and science of medicine, rather than the pretension and advocacy of the gullible, unqualified or unscrupulous, is noted.