INTRODUCTORY. Mankind in general and practitioners of the healing art in particular may be likened to the different groups of dwellers in a series of narrow and deep valleys surrounded by lofty mountains. Each ordinarily obtains a restricted of view of his own valley and sees little or nothing of the others. When by chance or intent they meet on an eminence, which is far above all their natural habitats, their view is not only broader and more accurate as concerns their own individual valleys, but extends in varying degrees over the domains of others. So it is with the members of our guild, when they rise to a higher intellectual plane at meetings such as this; their respective views broaden and tend to harmonize with those of their fellows, while at the same time the aggregate of their fields of mental vision is vastly augmented. The general practitioner surveys the domain