skill to properly diagnose and cure the functional 50 per cent suggests
another reason for the negative reaction of the average doctor to these
patients; he cannot help but feel that he is relatively helpless to treat
with any degree of permanent success what may be more than half of
his patients. These patients, with their ever-present unresponsive com-
plaints, may seem to constitute a walking monument to the doctor's
inadequacy, failure, and defeat. How could any physician avoid a nega-
tive response to people whose complaints seem proof of his own failures?
It is the rare doctor who could hope to welcome patients whom he is not
trained to diagnose or treat, and whose particular symptoms are likely
to be personally disagreeable in the sense that they are troubled people
who never give the doctor the gratification of getting well. For the sake
of the physician's own professional satisfaction it will be well for him
to seek out the postgraduate training that will enable him to deal with
the "troublesome" functional 50 per cent.

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