Intrauterine Transfusion for Haemolytic Disease of the Newborn.

admiration for a man whose natural inclination was towards the scholar's life, yet who was drawn into the practice of medicine and the mitigation of suffering by his pity for and desire to help poor suffering England. Maybe destiny decided that his unique relation to the sovereign as personal medical attendant and instructor of the royal children, along with an unusual gift for diplomacy and the tactful handling of proud men and their dependants, fitted him for a special role in the progress of medical affairs. At any rate, through such patronage and access to the throne, Linacre and his little band of devoted medical colleagues initiated a revolution in the organization of the profession and sounded a call for higher standards in training and ethics that has constituted the grandeur of the Royal College of Physicians throughout its long history. The fact that he advocated the out-of-date scholastic approach to medicine by his devotion to Galen and the ancient writers, and that he ignored the signals of a new science which had already appeared above the horizon, has its warning for those of us who engage our lives in the detection and prevention of the ravages of disease. We, too, are faced by the tremendous upsurge of science in general and of scientific medicine in particular. The challenge is, I believe, a much more serious one in medicine than in other disciplines, for it is all too easy for the doctor to take refuge in the time-honoured beliefs of the past and rest content with delegating, often with scarcely concealed contempt and patronage, the duty of investigation to a little band of dedicated workers. No one who has come through an illness, least of all myself, will decry the God-given qualities that warm the personality of the born clinician and make him an ever-present help in times of trouble. But these gifts are still menaced by pretence and humbug which is not confined to the ignorant and indolent but threatens the seats of the mighty and successful. We who spend much of our lives in training the oncoming member of our profession must be especially alert to challenge and combat the shoddy and the sham, the facile explanations, the dead-hand of plausible empiricism. Like Linacre, we are standing at the portal of a dazzling, unbounded world of medical science, entry -to which calls for courage, imagination, and the highest qualities that bless the human spirit. May we not be found wanting when the opportunity of playing our part comes our way.