Many medical practitioners already fulfill this ideal. It would oftener be realized were it not for the excessive work which many are obliged to undertake. In the early history of public health in England poor law medical officers, attending the impoverished in their dwellings and familiar with their home conditions, became part-time medical officers of health. But the attempt to combine prevention and treatment proved unsuccessful, because these officers visited only a small proportion of the dwellings of the poor, because they were not trained in preventive work, and because the good seed of preventive work was choked by the increasing demands of lucrative private practice. In connection with the future general medical service, curative as well as preventive, it is not beyond the range of human ingenuity to provide schemes for district medical officers (health and clinical) adequately trained in public health work, and linked up closely with the hospital and dispensary unit for their area. This will cost money. But sound health is our greatest personal and national asset, and disease is always more expensive than health. “Who winds up days with toil, and nights with sleep” has “the forehand and vantage of the king,” if the latter suffers in body or mind. The real wealth of a nation does not consist in its money, in the volume of its trade, or in the extent of its dominion. These are only valuable insofar as they help to maintain a population—and not only a portion of it—of the right quality; men, women and children possessing bodily vigor, alert mind, firm character, courage and self-control. This ideal can never be realized unless and until the medical men of the future train themselves for and devote themselves to their essential share in its fulfillment, and while keeping this ideal in view see to it that every step taken is one which will be consistent with the complete scheme of the future. We are all concerned in the efficiency of every member of the community, from an economic as well as from a humanitarian standpoint. Can we be satisfied while a large proportion of the population do not obtain medical and ancillary assistance to the extent of their needs? Does such a state of things conduce to the settlement of social unrest? Is it consistent with Christian principles? If communal provision has been recognized as a duty for police protection, for sanitation, for elementary education, should it not likewise be admitted for the more subtle and maleficent enemies of health which have been recognized, but which in no community have hitherto been completely combatted?