There are no established indicators for measuring the influence of its private physicians on a society's health. For a brief period the age-adjusted death rate, an important indicator of the public health effort, also served to reflect a portion of the influence of the personal physician system. Particular medical interventions could be linked to specific sites in the pathogenesis of microbial disease in a way not yet permitted by the available knowledge of the common nonmicrobial diseases. Our national allocations for health cannot be made rationally until we develop indicators for measuring incremental investments in either system, but especially for the personal physician system. For death rates per se fail to accurately reflect the workings of this system which is concerned primarily with prolonging effective life by preserving or restoring function in an individual person.