The Dispensary is now operated by the Association for the Relief and Control of Tuberculosis, and the nurses are supplied by the Health Department. The nursing staff consists of a supervising nurse and six field nurses, the latter receiving $720 per year. They wear no uniform. They give a limited amount of bedside care, some member of the family being taught to properly care for the patient, if he cannot be sent to a hospital. Recently an additional nurse was engaged by the Association to follow up cases on whom no diagnosis has been made and who have not returned to the dispensary for re-examination. Since the Dispensary was opened in 1909, there have been over one thousand such cases. Many of these had suspicious signs when examined, but there has hitherto been no means of keeping in touch with them, as the nurses have been obliged to confine their attention to positive cases. One of the chief difficulties of the Buffalo campaign, as elsewhere, has been the fact that more than half of the cases have probably already infected others. This latest movement of the Association should anticipate this condition to a certain extent, and is one more means by which it is "blazing the trail" toward its goal,—"No uncared for tuberculosis in Buffalo in 1915."

In the General Appropriations Act of 1907 the Legislature of Pennsylvania granted to the State Department of Health, in addition to its regular budget, the sum of $400,000, "to establish and maintain, in such places in the State as may be deemed necessary, dispensaries for the free treatment of indigent persons affected

with tuberculosis, for the study of social and occupational conditions that predispose to its development, and for continuing research experiments for the establishment of possible immunity and cure of said disease."

Immediately after securing the above appropriation, the State Department of Health began to establish dispensaries throughout the state, one or more in each county. The staff of each dispensary consists of a chief, who is also county medical inspector, and a corps of assistant physicians and visiting nurses. There is a supervising nurse with one assistant at Harrisburg, who oversee and inspect the work of the staff nurses.

The number of nurses in the dispensaries throughout the state varies from a nurse shared by another organization or a practical nurse giving part time, to from four to seven nurses in one dispensary. There are now more than 115 State Department Tuberculosis Dispensaries in Pennsylvania, Philadelphia having three.

An idea of the general plan of the work may be gained from a description given of the State Department Dispensary No. 21, located in Philadelphia, by Dr. Francine: