Medical Fads and Fancies 19 
take stock of certain elements that seem factors in the 
situation? 
The activities of mankind, relatively within an ex- 
ceedingly short space of time, have been elaborated to 
a vastness that knows no approximation or precedent. 
It is trite to speak of an age of specialization, but it is 
such an age, and a time when each limited activity re- 
quires a mental equipment and effort for its accomplish- 
ment that fully occupies and exhausts the capacity of 
its disciple. In all specialization there is a tendency to 
an unfortunate narrowing that precludes a broad sur- 
vey of the whole; not only this but exhausts capacity 
for much, Through endeavor in a multiplicity of direc- 
tions, we have developed divergently until we have far 
exceeded our powers of generalization. 
The modern practice of medicine presents no excep- 
tion as to the divergence of views on other subjects; a 
fact quite apparent to the doctor and frequently sud- 
denly embarrassingly displayed to the patient. It is a 
hard situation when the seeker for satisfying medical 
advice is given diametrically opposed opinions by dif- 
ferent practitioners as to the causation of his symp- 
toms; when he is told that his chronic rheumatism is 
due to infected tonsils by the nose and throat man, to 
intestinal stasis by the internist, an infected gall bladder 
and appendix by the surgeon, while at the same time 
his dentist naively suggests the functioning teeth as the 
undoubted primary cause of the same infirmity. Re- 
grettably few of us have any capacity for seeing our- 
selves as others see us. The patient admits without ef- 
fort the ridiculousness of such a situation in which 
Prosecutor, judge, jury and executioner are embodied 
in one with a fee contingent on conviction. He may 
even infer unpleasant motives for such disharmony, but 
