SOURCE: A review of The Instincts of the Herd in Peace and War, 1916-1919, in The Australian Quarterly, Vol. XXVI, No. 1, March, 1954, pp. 114-16.

Waddell reviews The Instincts of the Herd in Peace and War, and deems it an outstanding examination of society's primary influences.

Wilfred Trotter, 1872-1939, was one of the foremost surgeons of his time and for many years an outstanding figure in British medicine. He was a humanist of great intellectual power, widely admired for his clinical wisdom and surgical craftsmanship and his inspiring gifts as a teacher. He devoted considerable attention to social psychology to which he made an original and valuable contribution by The Instincts of the Herd in Peace and War.

The book is a collection of essays written between 1905 and 1919. The early essays were published in The Sociological Review in 1908-9, and the whole series was published in book form in...