One might be inclined to make little of such criticism, believing that it is the natural lot of every difficult profession, but the truth is that many of us who are in a position to hear of these experiences find that they are becoming more numerous, that they are often serious, and that the majority are quite avoidable. The difficulty seems to arise from a failure of “liaison,” and at first sight it often seems as though a more highly organized medical profession might be better qualified to deal with the situation. The fact is, however, that this type of trouble may arise in exactly those cases which have been in contact with one or more of the most modern clinics, and a careful study of the circumstances makes it perfectly clear that the trouble arises, not from a lack of organization but from lack of personal supervision and responsibility. For some reason or other no one physician has seen the case through from beginning to end, and the patient may be suffering from the very multitude of his counsellors. Of course I do not mean to infer that lack of continual personal responsibility on the part of an attending physician is the sole explanation of the failure of the patient to establish a happy relationship with the medical profession, but the observation of a great many cases in which the patient or his family have felt that the relationship was unsatisfactory, incomplete, remote and cold, makes me feel certain that it is a very common explanation. Those of us who value the high tradition which we have inherited in our profession find much pleasure in the intimate bonds that have always existed between ourselves and our patients, and if any break is threatened we must try to discover and meet its causes as early as possible. There are unquestionably many explanations for the loosening of the bonds between doctor and patient, but I shall dwell at present on only one aspect of the situation, an aspect that involves the point of view of the layman, and one in the correction of which the layman can play almost, if not quite, as important a part as the medical profession itself.