The administration of a department of medicine, with its complicated relationships and responsibilities toward a large group of various types of men, to the students of three classes, to interns, to the medical school administration with all its subdivisions (wards, social service, outpatient department, dietetics and other clinical departments), to patients and their families, and to laboratories, represents a problem which is unapproached in any other department of the medical school with the possible exception of that of surgery. One frequently hears it said that if the chief is a good administrator he will divide all this work up and put it on the shoulders of his assistants. To a certain extent this is possible and is, indeed, absolutely necessary; but experience has shown me that beyond a certain point it is unwise to do so and that the major part of the administrative responsibility must be assumed by the chief. The representatives of the medical school, the superintendent of the hospital, the chief of the roentgen-ray department, the assistant in charge of the chemical laboratory, all want to deal directly with the chief; and the smooth running of the clinic demands that they shall. But to my mind it is not only to these dignitaries that the chief must leave his door ajar. How often one finds interns and students lurking outside the office, waiting to catch the chief as he hurries by. “Can I have five minutes with you, sir?” You let him in, sit down, and find that what he has approached so modestly is the problem of his whole career; and who can tell whether it may not be a career with very significant possibilities? Is there, on the whole, anything more important than giving advice about a man’s life? Of course, a first class administrator might say, “Tell him to return next Tuesday at 2:30, at the time appointed for such conferences.” All right; but usually the youth has worked himself up and is full of his problems now, and it is _now_ that you can help him most. We hear a great deal about the necessity of the professor “closing his door” and “protecting himself.” I fear that some of this “protection” is made necessary by the fact that our professors are apt to be rather inexperienced, and they have to get their training after they get their job. The real question is whether the professor ought to devote himself to looking after his own career or whether he ought to regard as his first duty that of stimulating, helping and advancing his assistants. Of course, this is largely a question of personality; but there are so few men whose research ability is extraordinarily valuable (and, as I have said, they ought not to be professors of medicine) that I believe in general in the “open door policy.” This is, at any rate, the policy that best suits my temperament and capacity. I have always attempted to keep some of my own work going, partly through assistants, and, so far