There are great advantages in this apparently formal and obvious point of connection. In the first place the _medical method of approach_ to close relations, to friendly relations, with a group of people, is decidedly the easiest. Persons who may be suspicious or resentful of our approach if we appear primarily as investigators, or primarily as persons concerned with economic or moral control, will welcome the visitor if she appears as the arm, the cordially extended hand, of the medical institution where they have already found welcome and relief. I know well that charity organization workers, court workers and others may establish just as close a relation with their clients _in the end_ as is possible for the medical social worker. But the start is harder and needs more experience. Because disease is the common enemy of mankind, all sorts and conditions of men are instinctively drawn together when it becomes necessary to resist the attacks of disease as the enemy of the human family. Members of a family may disagree about many matters, and may be far from congenial with one another in ordinary times and upon ordinary subjects, but will draw together into the closest kind of unity if any one attacks the family, accuses or criticises the family. So human beings of widely different environment, taste, economic status, heredity, may find it quite easy to begin and to maintain friendly relations when that which brings them together is their common interest in the struggle against disease. It is, indeed, almost too easy to get friendly with people when they are suffering physically and we are endeavoring, however lamely, to bring them relief.