Industrial development in the United States has resulted in a marked degree of standardization of thought and action. Faith in card indexes, "systems" and efficiency methods has been fostered by advertising and by articles on the subject in the popular magazines. The facts and the near-facts of the sciences and particularly of the medical sciences have been set forth in the most sensational manner by writers in the public press. The many new and startling mechanical inventions have given people the impression that the practice of medicine has kept pace with the mechanical development in other fields of endeavor and that diagnoses are now made with mechanical, if not mathematical precision, thanks to the various blood tests. Many laymen believe that not only the presence or absence of disease but the name of the disease as well can be so determined. Such a state of affairs has set the stage