It would be rash to deny that up to a certain point this convention is susceptible of defence. But, carried too far, it is productive of disastrous results. Moreover, it is impossible for a doctor to treat many varieties even of physical disease without becoming to a great extent the confidant not only of the patient but often of his family. And there is no doubt that the present unwritten law that the doctor should confine himself to the patient’s physical ills is often judiciously disobeyed by very many successful practitioners. Yet it must be recognised that the convention exists, and like all social usages is extremely tenacious. The chief medical objection, which we shall now consider, is usually expressed in some such form as the assertion that “it makes the patient worse to talk about his worries” and that one should rather “try to make him forget them.” Let us examine these statements, both of which contain a certain amount of truth, but if applied without qualification to serious cases of incipient mental disorder can by their respective negative and positive tendencies do an incalculable amount of harm. They are often the result of applying experience acquired by the successful reassuring of a certain type of “malade imaginaire,” to the consideration of far more complicated cases in which such easy and straightforward treatment is impossible. A man, let us say, visits a doctor and confesses to him his fear that he is suffering from some organic disease. The physician after a careful examination proves to the patient by objective means that there is nothing the matter with him; the sufferer is reassured and returns to his daily business and in due course forgets about this worry or ceases to be troubled by the memory of it. Here the diagnosis, treatment, and cure may be uncomplicated and “on the surface.” But even here it should be emphasised that in one sense, far from “making the patient worse” to talk about his trouble, the talking about it was the _sine quâ non_ of cure; otherwise the doctor would never have known of the fear. In another sense, however, talking about the trouble did make the sufferer worse—but for a short time only, during a confession of his apprehensions, or perhaps even for a few days, if more than one visit to the consulting room were necessary before the doctor’s verdict could be obtained.