It is well known that the medical profession is constantly on the alert for any new discoveries that will benefit suffering humanity; and I am told that they welcome suggestions, even from laymen, that may be helpful in achieving this end. One of the habitual aversions that people have to clinics and hospitals is their arbitrary rules and regulations, in complying with which patients feel that they are obliged practically to relinquish all control over both body and mind. Indeed I once heard a woman remark that she looked on these places as she did on a jail. Doubtless this is an altogether wrong impression; but nevertheless it prevails. We must assume that the first concern of every physician is that his patients have not only the best care but a complacent mind; and one way of helping to accomplish this desire is for surgeons to invent some substitute for adhesive tape. And I wonder if clinics and hospitals intend always to keep castor oil at the head of their diet list. Furthermore if physicians were to establish a more mutual and candid relationship with their patients, and authorize nurses and other hospital attachés to treat them as rational human beings, possessed of some knowledge of their own feelings--at least to the extent of knowing whether they are getting better or worse--it might help to remedy a condition which I once heard an eminent physician term “an emergent deficiency.” =TRANSCRIBER’S NOTES= Punctuation, hyphenation, and spelling were made consistent when a predominant preference was found in the original book; otherwise they were not changed. A Table of Contents has been added for convenience.