The Poet Laureate has pointed out that several useful words have been lost to the English language because their identity in sound with other words renders it impossible to use them without the risk either of being misunderstood or of calling up undesirable associations.  It is owing to this cause that English—­or, at least, the English of Great Britain—­has no word that can correctly be used as a general designation for a member of the healing profession.  In America, I believe, the word is ‘physician’; but in England that appellation belongs to one branch of the profession exclusively.  The most usual term here is ‘doctor’; but the M.D. rightly objects to the application of this title to his professional brother who has no degree; and in a university town to say that John Smith is a doctor would be inconveniently ambiguous.  ‘Medical man’ is cumbrous, and has the further disadvantage (in these days) of not being of common gender.  Now the lack of any proper word for a meaning so constantly needing to be expressed is certainly a serious defect in modern (insular) English.  The Americans have some right to crow over us here; but their ‘physician’ is a long word; and though it has been good English in the sense of medicus for six hundred years, it ought by etymology to mean what physicien does in French, and physicist in modern English.  Our ancestors were better off in this respect than either we or the Americans.  The only native word to denote a practiser of the healing art is leech, which is better than the foreign ‘physician’ because it is shorter.  It was once a term of high dignity:  Chaucer could apply it figuratively to God, as the healer of souls; and even in the sixteenth century a poet could address his lady as ’My sorowes leech’.  Why can we not so use it now?  Why do we not speak of ’The Royal College of Leeches’?  Obviously, because a word of the same form happens to be the name of an ugly little animal of disgusting habits.  If I were to introduce my medical attendant to a friend with the words ‘This is my leech’, the gentleman (or lady) so presented would think I was indulging in the same sort of pleasantry as is used when a coachman is called a ‘whip’; and he (or she) would probably not consider the joke to be in the best of taste.  Of course all educated people know that it was once not unusual to speak of a man of medicine as a ‘leech’; but probably there are many who imagine that this designation was a disparaging allusion to the man’s tool of trade, and that it could be applied only to inferior members of the profession.  The ancient appellation of the healer is so far obsolete that if I were to answer a question as to a man’s profession with the words ’Oh, he is a leech’, there would be some risk of being misunderstood to mean that he was a money-lender.