Medical Fads and Fancies 23 
tivity pursued intensively along limited lines. The ten- 
dency is for each to see the whole through his particular 
avenue of approach. It is a problem as yet unsolved— 
a product of an intensively productive epoch. Also it 
is a detriment that in this its formative period, scientific 
medicine is still cluttered with reflections of the unfor- 
tunate traditions and practices of earlier time. Again 
all are not as we are, there are many publicans and sin- 
ners in the guise of specialists who trouble greatly and 
to whom specialization affords an easy field for exploi- 
tation. Possibly, and it is to be hoped, the future will 
see great simplification, as principles and practices be- 
come standardized, so that it may be possible to develop 
general practitioners of a super-sort, men of the broad- 
est and noblest type having effective knowledge of the 
array of supporting specialties and sub-specialties, chief 
of whose functions will be the temporary reference of 
his patients to such sources for special help. He will 
indeed be the greatest specialist of them all, a reincar- 
nation of the old doctor, with all his priestly functions 
and with a capacity for truth that his predecessor never 
had—certainly the course seems in this direction. 
‘A great, possibly the greatest, problem with which 
present-day practical medicine is concerned is that of 
the overpowering elaboration of diagnostics. Our old 
doctor of the past generation had few diagnostic tools 
aside from those of nature’s endowment; his eyes, ears, 
fingers, his powers of observation and reason; though 
truth to say if a comparison must be drawn, he had in 
these diagnostic weapons that have never been ‘sur- 
passed. They are still paramount though no longer the 
only tools available and their effectiveness is being ap- 
proximated by scores of diagnostic means that have 
rendered diagnosis enormously more accurate, also 
