nsane who need institutional care.

The several institutions above mentioned have a very important
function apart from the relief of human suffering, in that they afford
unexcelled opportunities for giving practical instruction in nursing
and in the practice of medicine and surgery.

A few years ago there was not such a thing as a Filipina trained
nurse in the islands. I was firmly convinced that the Filipinas of
this country could learn to be good nurses, and made earnest efforts
to have included among the first students sent at government expense
to the United States several young women of good family who should
attend nurses' training schools and then return to assist in our
hospital work.

I failed to secure the adoption of this plan, but later the training
of nurses was inaugurated in connection with hospital work at the
old Civil Hospital, St. Paul's, the University Hospital, the Mary
J. Johnston Hospital and the Philippine General Hospital. At the latter
institution there is now conducted an admirable school where more than
two hundred young men and women are being trained. Three classes have
already graduated from it, and Filipina nurses have long since proved
themselves to be exceptionally efficient, capable and faithful. It
will be some time before we can educate as many as are needed in the
government hospitals, and after that has been accomplished a vast
field opens before others in the provincial towns, where the need of
trained assistants in caring for the sick is very great.

We found exceedingly few competent Filipino physicians or surgeons
in the islands. This condition was due not to natural incompetence
on the part of the Filipinos but to the previous lack of adequate
educational facilities. The government has established a thoroughly
modern college of medicine and surgery, well housed, and provided
with all necessary laboratory facilities. It furnishes the best of
theoretical instruction, while its students have every opportunity
for practical work at the bedsides of patients in the government
hospitals, all patients in free beds being admitted subject to the
condition that they will allow their cases to be studied.

While there is still an evident tendency on the part of graduates of
this school to feel that they know enough, and to desire to get to
making money without delay, we are nevertheless managing to attract an
increasingly large number of the more competent to the intern service
of th