He is often very much at a loss to be sure how bad the patient's symptoms really are, how much the patient suffers, how serious the case is. The social worker is often able to help in discovering why the patient really came to the dispensary, discovering, perhaps, that the reason is such as to show that the malady is really a trifling one. She may find, for instance, that the patient has come merely because her husband had to come, anyway, and she thought she would get the benefit of whatever there was to be had in the way of medical assistance at the dispensary, even though, unless her husband had been going, anyway, it would not have occurred to her to make the independent visit upon her own account. Or, again, the visit may be due chiefly to curiosity, especially if the dispensary has been newly established or has added some new features to its methods of diagnosis and treatment. These facts are passed along from person to person; the person hearing of them may appear as a patient chiefly to see just what it is that her neighbors are getting when they go to the dispensary. I have known a patient to come merely because he was alarmed as a result of a recent conversation with a friend. His friend had been hearing about heart trouble and had mentioned some symptoms such as pain about the heart or cold extremities or dizziness. Any one sick or well on hearing such symptoms may easily remember that he has had them himself not long ago, or may even begin to feel them as a result of suggestion. Straightway, perhaps, he will betake himself to the dispensary, complaining of symptoms which never would have been noticed but for his talk with the friend. Or, again, the patient may have some definite organic disease or some obstinate train of discomforts and physical inconveniences. But he has adapted himself to them tolerably; he has settled down to bear or forget them as best he may. He may know that his troubles are really incurable and yet not serious. He may have become as accustomed to them as he is to an uncomfortable lodging or to a modest income. Yet, as a result of some temporary fatigue, some newspaper paragraph, some fragment of gossip overheard, there may arise in him a crisis of alarm and worry about his familiar discomforts or inconveniences. Thereupon he may betake himself to a dispensary, and give the physician an account which may be very difficult to interpret, because the physician does not understand the train of events which appear acute and new in that they have led the patient just now, rather than at any earlier time, to seek advice. After nearly twenty years' experience of dispensary work I should say that in no respect can a social worker give the doctor more welcome help than by discovering now and then reasons such as I have just suggested whereby the patient comes to the dispensary now rather than at any other time, and at a season not really connected in any special way with the nature of his disease.