which belongs to the pioneer and which urges him beyond our present confines. In these two fields, therefore, in research and in the application to practice of specialized knowledge or complex technical procedures, the expert is absolutely necessary, but the number of men actually needed to satisfy the demands is relatively small and, in the natural course of events, there will always be enough doctors whose intellectual interests direct them to intensive study. The lay public, therefore, need have little anxiety about having sufficient specialists to serve them. The important problem for the public is whether they still have need of encouraging the development of general practitioners. Here is the crux of the situation! Is an attitude which is bound to result in a progressive increase in the number of specialists, at the cost of a progressive decrease both in the number and quality of general practitioners, one which will ultimately be of general benefit? In the light of the development of modern medicine, is the general practitioner an essential factor in preserving and promoting health or is he a makeshift necessary only in communities too small or too poor to support a competent corps of specialists? Can the public get along without the general practitioner? To those who are in a position to see the helpless flounderings of the unfortunates who pass from specialist to specialist the answer is very clear. Never was the sound general practitioner more important than he is today. Never was the public in need of wise, broadly trained advisers so much as it needs them today to guide them through the complicated maze of modern medicine. The extraordinary development of medical science, with its consequent diversity of medical specialism and the increasing limitations in the extent of special fields--the very factors, indeed, which are creating specialists, in themselves create a new demand, not for men who are experts along narrow lines, but for men who are in touch with many lines. The advantages to be derived from advice and treatment by specialists are entirely obvious, but the disadvantages are by no means always so clearly understood. They are inherent in the training, however, for depth is not often combined with breadth, and the enthusiasm which makes one an expert in a limited field is frequently the very factor which prevents him from viewing a situation as a whole. The training of the specialist is in its essence intensive, and he can detect the slightest abnormality in the organ or system which constitutes his field, but man is not merely an aggregation of organs or of systems--he is first of all a human being whose proper care involves an appreciation of his body as a whole, together with the circumstances of his life. Many a sick person, after visiting a series of experts, and being treated for the abnormalities which each discovered in his own sphere, remains an invalid because none of his