er help. A
slip of a girl--though a well-trained nurse--who commenced work in a
nearby community was introduced to her new work with two confinement
cases and an accident case the first day, for none of which was a
physician obtainable. The Red Cross Nurse in my own county has spent
many a night in a farm home in order to get sufficiently acquainted with
parents to induce them to allow her to have needed treatment given to
their children, and when the parents come to realize the benefit which
their children have received from operations on tonsils or adenoids, the
fitting of glasses, and similar services, and appreciate the handicap
which such defects would have been to them through life, the nurse has a
warm place in their hearts and they eagerly support her work.

One of the difficulties of the average country doctor is his lack of
facilities for the expert diagnosis of disease and for the care of
patients who need to be kept under observation and given supervised
care. Medical science has become highly specialized. The human body is
so complicated and wonderful a mechanism that we no longer can expect
any one man to be expert on all its ailments. If one desires to secure
the best medical service, he goes to a large city hospital or a
sanitarium, where various specialists can be consulted and where
laboratory facilities are available for their aid. In the average
village or country town both specialists and laboratories are lacking
and the physician is dependent on his own knowledge and resources. The
well-trained physician who appreciates his own limitations and that he
cannot give many of his more difficult cases the care they ought to
have, sends those who can afford it to the nearest hospital, and does
the best he can for the others, but he is keenly aware that he cannot
always give them the treatment they should have and he envies his city
colleague who can take his patients to specialists for examination.

It is a fear of this professional isolation which causes the average
young doctor to start his practice in the city where he has better
facilities, and which is largely responsible for the small number of
young doctors in rural counties. It is, of course, impossible to have a
hospital in every hamlet, but it is possible to have a good hospital and
laboratories at every county seat or small city center, so that there
will be at least one such medical center in a county. Legislation has
now been enacted in seve