From a review of the literature Carstairs (1959) demonstrated that the sharp rise in admissions to mental hospitals since the Second World War has been due to the changing pattern of use of these hospitals, and not to any significant change in the prevalence of major mental disorder. The present paper examines statistics relating to admissions to Scottish mental hospitals in general, and to Dingleton Hospital in particular, in the 15 post-war years 1945–1959, with the object of showing some of the ways in which the character of admissions to mental hospitals has changed over that period.