On examining the local city directory, one cannot but be impressed by the multiplicity of voluntary organizations having for their object the immediate relief of destitution or the social or economic “uplift” of sections of the population. The multiplicity of these agencies becomes more striking when one remembers that probably every one of the hundreds of churches and chapels in the city has its periodical sacramental and other collections for the poor, and may have also a system of parochial district visiting, with such auxiliary assistance as is provided through mothers’ meetings, etc. Nor does this exhaust the possibilities of social help available for the poorer members of society in cities in which there is a satisfactory distribution of rich and poor, that is, in which the segregation of different social strata in separate areas has happily not befallen. There is the further help provided by individual charity, the amount of which in the aggregate probably exceeds beneficence through churches and social agencies. If these different agencies could pool their resources, while retaining the enthusiasm and driving power of separate organization, what an economy of effort and what increase of efficiency would result, especially if these agencies were also satisfactorily related to the official organizations of local and central governing bodies having the same object! But I am not concerned this evening to discuss the machinery of social help or the attempts already made in different centres for securing their satisfactory coöperation. Nor am I disposed to discuss the economic problems underlying the need for social assistance of the poor. Ideally we must agree with St. Augustine’s statement: “Thou givest bread to the hungry; but better were it, that none hungered, and that thou had’st none to give him.” My present object, however, is to set out some elementary—and when stated fairly obvious—considerations bearing on social evils and their remedies under present conditions of society, the recollection of which if followed by practical action, would secure greatly increased efficiency in social work. For the following reasons I do not hesitate to bring this subject before a gathering of graduate medical students: First.—Every physician as soon as he engages in medical practice almost immediately comes into touch with organized and unorganized social workers, and his success—personal as well as communal—can almost be measured in terms of his outlook towards their work; Second.—The physician, with his scientific training in the tracing of effects back to their causes, is in a specially favourable position to promote rational as contradistinguished from empirical social help; and Third.—The physician is now learning to appreciate that he can only treat his patients satisfactorily in the light of knowledge of their social, including housing conditions, of their industrial relationships, and of their personal history and habits of life.