In the past 2½ decades there has occurred a very considerable expansion of medical school faculties in the United States. In the main this has reflected a commitment on the part of the federal government to support biomedical research, and has amounted to a quintupling of the number of those physicians holding full-time positions as faculty members. What this has meant, of course, is that large numbers of young physicians in training have elected to build and maintain their professional lives in close and continuing relation to university medical centers; that is, they have, in the parlance of the day, opted for "Academic Medicine." This term has come to mean, from a pragmatic point of view, activities carried out, usually on a full-time basis, in a university hospital setting, and characterized by a combination of research and teaching, together with some clinical responsibilities; the latter, more often than not, have