cer in the pay of the state shall
treat venereal disease free of charge. In comparison with the tremendous
advances over previous indifference which such programs represent, this
country makes a poor showing. Among us, no public agency is formally
charged with any duty in the matter of preventing, recognizing, or
treating the vast amount of venereal infection that mars our national
health. Certain state boards of health are attempting to perform
Wassermann tests, and certain municipalities have well-organized
laboratories for the detection of syphilis and gonorrhea, but there are
few purely public agencies that even pretend to have a specialist in
their employ to assist in the recognition of cases and conduct the
treatment of patients who cannot afford private care. Hospital and
dispensary treatment of venereal diseases is almost entirely in
semi-private hands, and a recent investigation of clinics and
dispensaries for the treatment of syphilis and gonorrhea in New York
city, for example, showed that many of them were so poorly equipped and
run at such unreasonable hours that they were frequented only by
vagabonds, were of no value in the early recognition of syphilis, could
not administer salvarsan under conditions to which a discriminating
patient would dare to trust himself, and made no pretense at following
their cases beyond the door or discharging them from medical care as
cured. One of the largest cities in this country until a year ago had
not even a night clinic to which day workers could come, and is scarcely
awake now to the necessity for such a thing.

+Dispensary Service.+--The provision of adequate treatment and
diagnostic facilities, on a par with those which will presently cover
Europe, will mean the following things: First of all, dispensaries, and
many of them, for the identification of early cases, fully equipped with
dark-field microscopes, with record systems, and with the means for
following patients from the time they enter until they are cured. This
means nurses, it means social service workers, it means doctors with
special and not general knowledge of syphilis and gonorrhea. The
Brooklyn Hospital Dispensary is an admirable example of what such an
institution should be, but it is one where such institutions should be
numbered by dozens and by hundreds. Copenhagen, with a population less
than that of several cities in this country which have none, has seven
municipal clinics whose hours and names