Such treatment violated grossly one of the basal laws of medical psychology, which recognizes that no one ever stops worrying because he is told to do so. To give such a command is as irrational as to tell an epileptic not to have convulsions or a choreic patient not to wriggle his hands. Yet this sort of error is constantly committed by physicians who have been well trained to understand the physical changes of disease, but have never concerned themselves to recognize the simplest and most obvious facts about the mental condition of the sick. As I have already said, it is impossible for the dispensary doctor to become acquainted with the details of the patient's malady, or to find out by investigation and experiment how the patient's mind may be made to aid his recovery rather than to impede it. This is the proper task for a social worker, partly because she has more time, partly because she is a woman, and is for that reason more fitted to get into close touch with the patient's mind and to use skill and tact in managing him. Such studies of the social worker are equally important in the case of the functional neuroses; for example, in the cases where the patient's troubles can be most effectively attacked by ridding him of his fears. Fear plays a dominant role in the sufferings of many cases both of organic and of functional disease. In a recent examination of six hundred and sixty-two young men about to enter Harvard University, it was found that "there were more boys who thought they had a serious organic defect, usually of the heart, and were found entirely sound than boys who thought they were well and had disease." They had been threatened with heart disease by gymnasium instructors or ill-trained physicians. They had in consequence restricted their physical activities and been haunted by the fear that they might by some unusual exercise of mind or body make themselves seriously ill or perhaps suddenly die. Such fears were all the more disastrous in these young men for being only half realized by themselves. It is exactly these shadowy apprehensions, these dreads which dwell in the half light, never quite faced in full consciousness, which torment and incapacitate us the most. Careful physical examination showed that the young men just referred to were free from all disease, and the clear and emphatic statement of this fact rendered a prompt and important service.