Dissociation from medical practice, with its implications of retirement and leisure for the physician, presents a problem that has been discussed too infrequently in our medical journals. Yet it has become a dominant conversational topic among colleagues in hospital lounges as well as interdepartmental and intradepartmental staff members of our institutions for medical teaching. The majestic attraction of the word "retirement" approaches in popularity the term "baseball" in gatherings of seasoned physicians; their conversations are frequently threaded with attempts at solution. Indeed, free discussions concerning retirement have their embryonic origin not infrequently at such early stages as the resident training period.
Usually before middle age, and sooner rather than later, the physician becomes confronted with the problem of desire for voluntary separation from professional duties, assuming he survives long enough. As life expectancy has become lengthened, more physicians face the decision of retiring voluntarily. Today's influences on the industrial worker,