doctors was accustomed to look at a case as a whole. Many a patient, after going the rounds of the specialists, has found relief in mental healing or New Thought or Christian Science, because he lacked the guidance of a sound general practitioner who understood his physical condition, his nervous temperament and knew the details of his daily life. And many a patient, who on his own initiative has sought out specialists, has had minor defects accentuated so that they assumed a needless importance, and has even undergone operations that might well have been avoided. Those who are particularly blessed with this world’s goods, who want the best regardless of the cost and imagine that they are getting it because they can afford to consult as many renowned specialists as they wish, are often pathetically tragic figures as they veer from one course of treatment to another. Like ships that lack a guiding hand upon the helm, they swing from tack to tack with each new gust of wind, but get no nearer to the Port of Health because there is no pilot to set the general direction of their course. The latest substitute for the breadth of vision of the general practitioner is that offspring of the American God of Efficiency, the Diagnostic Clinic. What a strong appeal it makes, this apparently ideal combination of a group of specialists so closely affiliated as to afford all the advantages of expert knowledge and at the same time maintain the desirable general supervision! Practically the method seems to work out about like most substitutes--sometimes well and sometimes badly. It all depends upon the men who constitute the group. At its best the patient finds himself in the hands of a wise, broadly trained physician who handles his case personally and refers as occasion demands to intimate and trusted associates who are skilled in special fields. One man has personal supervision over the case and devotes enough time to it to grasp all of its ramifications, so that he can estimate the relative importance of the findings of the specialists on the production of the symptoms in the individual. At its worst, however, the Diagnostic Clinic is a machine, and the patient is automatically passed from one specialist to another and submitted to a series of examinations, so detailed in their nature that it would seem that nothing could be overlooked. The result is a list of so-called “diagnoses”--in reality a list of deviations from the normal, some of which may, and others of which certainly do not have any bearing on the patient’s trouble. The unfortunate thing is that only too often the patient undergoes treatment for some of these unimportant conditions and at the same time, because of the lack of some one man who understands the situation as a whole, the real underlying difficulty is entirely overlooked.