It may not have escaped your professional observation that there are only two classes of mankind in the world--doctors and patients. I have some delicacy in confessing that I belong to the patient class--ever since a doctor told me that all patients were phenomenal liars where their own symptoms were concerned. If I dared to take advantage of this magnificent opportunity which now lies before me, I should like to talk to you all about my symptoms. However, I have been ordered--on medical advice--not to talk about patients, but doctors. Speaking then, as a patient, I should say that the average patient looks upon the average doctor very much as the non-combatant looks upon the troops fighting on his behalf. The more trained men there are between his dearly beloved body and the enemy, he thinks, the better. I have had the good fortune this afternoon of meeting a number of trained men who, in due time, will be drafted into your permanently mobilised army which is always in action, always under fire against Death. Of course it is a little unfortunate that Death, as the senior practitioner, is always bound to win in the long run, but we non-combatants, we patients, console ourselves with the idea that it will be your business to make the best terms you can with Death on our behalf; to see how his attacks can best be delayed or diverted, and when he insists on driving the attack home, to take care that he does it according to the rules of civilised warfare. Every sane human being is agreed that this long-drawn fight for time which we call Life is one of the most important things in the world. It follows therefore that you, who control and oversee this fight and you who will reinforce it, must be amongst the most important people in the world. Certainly the world will treat you on that basis. It has long ago decided that you have no working hours that anybody is bound to respect, and nothing except extreme bodily illness will excuse you in its eyes from refusing to help a man who thinks he may need your help at any hour of the day or night. Nobody will care whether you are in your bed or in your bath, on your holiday or at the theatre. If any one of the children of men has a pain or a hurt in him you will be summoned. And, as you know, what little vitality you may have accumulated in your leisure will be dragged out of you again.