same hospital should and could legally not prejudice the jury. But it evidently did, all the same. And after such experience, can you for one moment believe it would not damage the physician's cause if he and his experts belonged to a society formed for the express purpose of mutual assistance in malpractice suits. A mighty poor lawyer he would be who could not make a great deal out of it before a jury. Very interesting was that part of the paper in which the doctor evolved his idea how his new society could prevent, ward off, malpractice suits. He believes the shysters would not be so eager to engage in this business if they knew they had to fight a corporation with plenty of means to employ the best legal talent. Why this should discourage those fellows it is hard to understand. They do not sue poverty-stricken doctors. Whom they select for their victims they suppose to be rich, and consequently able to employ a good lawyer. They do not expect to have all easy game, but why should they not try it? They don't risk anything by it. The blackmailer's stake is only two dollars and a half for filing his application, and his lawyer's stake is his time, which is not worth much anyhow. So you see they have nothing to lose, but much to gain. What difference should it make to them whether the opposing counsel is engaged by one physician or by one hundred? If you wish to devise means by which this blackmailing nuisance can be stopped, or at least reduced to a minimum, you must try to get to the roots of the evil; that is, you must find the causes which usually bring it forth. And you will not go far to find them, for you find them right at your door, in your own profession, in the shape of _indiscriminate dispensation of gratuitous services and of unkind remarks of one physician about another_. Physicians are altogether too quick to give their services gratis to almost any body at any time. But you know very well people do not value very much what they can get for the mere asking; they do not think much of what they get for nothing. And it is also a widespread notion (especially among the lower educated people) that the quality of service is regulated by the amount of money they pay for it; that the treatment at a free dispensary, because gratuitous, is not the same, not as good as at a physician's office where they have to pay for it. These people cannot persuade themselves that a physician will take the same interest in a case whether or not he is paid for his services. The poor, therefore, are always suspicious that they do not get their full share of attention. They are quickly ready to charge their physician with carelessness if the case goes wrong. And with a patient in this frame of mind, it takes but very little encouragement to begin a suit for damages. And in nine out of ten cases, doubtless, this encouragement is furnished by the members of our own profession. He did not mean to charge physicians with