NO. I AIR AND TUBERCULOSIS — HINSDALE 43 



The vicissitudes of sea-travel, the narrow cabins and the difficulty 

 of obtaining a suitable diet, even such common requisites as milk 

 and eggs, ought to be enough to condemn this plan. Tuberculous 

 patients ought not to travel more than is absolutely necessary. 

 Old ferry boats have been recently utilized in Nev^ York as class- 

 rooms for tuberculous scholars. The ferry boat " Southfield " has 

 been equipped for this work through the Miss Spence's School 

 Society under the direction and courtesy of Bellevue Hospital in 

 cooperation with Dr. John Winters Brannan and Dr. J. Alexander 

 Miller. 



There are three classes on the " Southfield " ; two for pulmonary 

 cases of about thirty-six children; these classes being part of the 

 regular Bellevue Clinic work and entirely supported by Bellevue. 



The third class is for tuberculous cripples with about twenty 

 children. The cost of nurses and special equipment for this class 

 together with incidental expenses is borne by the Spence School 

 Society. 



The teachers for all three classes are supplied by the New York 

 Board of Education so that they are a part of the regular school 

 system.^ 



Owing to the fact that these old ferry boats seem to answer a 

 useful purpose and in view of the reported use by the Italian Gov- 

 ernment of three discarded men-of-war as floating sanatoria in the 

 treatment of tuberculous patients, a request was made to the Navy 

 Department of the United States for similar ships by the Fourth 

 International Congress on School Hygiene at Buffalo, N. Y., August 

 29, 1913, in a resolution, a portion of which is as follows: 



Whereas, It has been demonstrated in New York and other cities that 

 discarded vessels lend themselves admirably to transformation into all-year- 

 round hospitals and sanatoria for consumptive adults, sanatoria for children 

 afflicted with joint and other types of tuberculosis, and into open air schools 

 for tuberculous, anemic, and nervous children; 



Resolved, That the fourth International Congress on School Hygiene peti- 

 tions the United States Government to place at the disposal of the various 

 States of the Union as many of the discarded battleships and cruisers as possi- 

 ble to be anchored according to their size in the rivers or at the seashore and 

 to be utilized by the respective communities for open air schools, preven- 

 toria, sanatorium schools for children, or hospital sanatoria for adults. 



The Secretary of the Navy, however, for the following very good 

 reasons, declined. 



^ See Buffalo Medical Journal, 1907-8, Vol. 63, 4L 



