little, and little has been added to it, but modern investigations have brought to it a greater significance. In the examination of the spinal fluid the cell count, which is the most important point, is merely an adaptation of the method of counting blood leucocytes, and not a new technical process. With regard to the examination of the gastric contents, body fluids, and feces, the same argument holds true; none of them involves difficult or prolonged examinations or expensive apparatus, and all of them yield information of the highest value to the man trained in their use and interpretation. Here, however, is the crux of the situation. All of these so-called routine tests are easy and consume little time in the hands of a trained man, but they are difficult, time-consuming, and of little value in the hands of an untrained man. What is really needed in the application of laboratory methods to the practice of medicine is not a knowledge of more technical procedures, but a much more exact knowledge of a few. Experience has shown that a proper degree of technical skill can rarely be obtained during the medical school course, and it should be the duty of every hospital to see that no house officer receives his diploma unless he has demonstrated an ability to perform satisfactorily all the simpler laboratory examinations and has shown a knowledge of how to use the results in the study of his patient. If every physician was so much at home with the technique of the simpler tests that it was quicker for him to apply them than to wonder whether they were worth while applying, and if he understood how to interpret these tests and gain the maximum information from them, the problem of the relation of the physician to the laboratory would be largely settled.