JOSEPH S. NEFtf, M. D. 159 



cations from the main office. Wall cards and circulars were 

 distributed in the homes by the patrolmen, who, under written 

 instructions from the Superintendent of Police, were compelled 

 to immediately transmit any call for a nurse, doctor, milk, ice, 

 or any information, by means of the street telephone, through 

 the local station house to the main office, which made the medical 

 and nursing attendance as prompt as ordinary patrol or am- 

 bulance service. 



The newspapers did much toward the success of the move- 

 ment, keeping constantly before the public all the details in con- 

 nection with the work. They frequently published the phone 

 numbers of the Central Office in the City Hall, and the fact that 

 this office could be reached through the patrolmen or station 

 houses. Addressed postal cards were left by the nurses in all 

 homes to be used in case of need. A number of hospitals and dis- 

 pensaries co-operated by daily mailing postal cards, furnished 

 by the Department, containing a list of sick infants for whom 

 treatment had been asked. There was kept a complete card 

 index of all infants in the wards in which the activities of the 

 municipal nurses were concentrated, and by mid-summer a com- 

 plete history of every infant, its mother, housing conditions and 

 general environment was obtained. 



As the summer work was to be used as an instructive exhibit 

 to City Councils of the need of a municipal Division of Child 

 Hygiene, the work of the nurses was confined to certain sec- 

 tions; and for more effective demonstrations, actual results of 

 these sections were to be compared with other localities not so 

 covered. Notwithstanding the entire city profited by the pub- 

 licity campaign, new milk stations and general work, including 

 the pier-hospitals, it showed 40 per cent, greater infant mor- 

 tality than the districts covered by the nurses as compared with 

 the corresponding period of the preceding year. To make the 

 comparison more marked, these districts were selected on ac- 

 count of poor housing and congestion of population. It may be 

 said, in passing, that last summer was the most trying one, from 

 weather conditions on babies, we have had with one exception 

 in thirteen years. 



A more complete understanding of the work of the nurses, dur- 

 ing the summer, can be had by the following statistics: 



