Am.  Jour.  Pharm. 
July,  1910. 
State  Control  of  Diseases. 
339 
bags,  pressed  paper  sputum  cups  for  use  in  tin  forms  and  pocket 
cuspidors. 
Earnest  effort  is  made  through  the  dispensaries  to  educate  the 
people  in  each  community  to  a  sense  of  the  value  of  thorough  room 
disinfection.  The  Department's  Health  Officers  are  instructed  in 
the  work  of  disinfection  and  supplied  with  the  necessary  equipment. 
A  postal  card  sent  to  any  health  officer  will  secure  his  speedy  atten- 
tion. Not  only  the  dispensary  physicians,  but  every  practitioner 
in  Pennsylvania,  is  supplied  with  a  list  of  the  names  and  addresses 
of  the  health  officers  located  in  his  own  and  adjoining  counties. 
The  following,  translated  from  the  Report  of  Prof.  F.  Egger, 
the  delegate  from  the  Federal  Council  of  Switzerland  to  the  recent 
International  Congress  on  Tuberculosis  at  Washington,  is  of  interest 
as  showing  the  impression  made  on  an  intelligent  and  cultivated 
foreign  expert,  by  the  part  which  our  state  is  taking  in  the  great 
world  movement  for  the  control  of  tuberculosis.  Professor  Egger 
says  "  Instructive  as  it  would  be  to  become  acquainted  with  the 
excellent  regulations  of  the  States  of  Maryland,  Massachusetts  and 
others,  we  must  content  ourselves  with  sketching  the  measures 
adopted  by  the  State  of  Pennsylvania,  partly  as  we  observed  them 
personally  and  partly  as  they  were  presented  in  an  admirable  collec- 
tive exhibit  accompanied  by  a  catalog  full  of  reliable  information 
at  Washington."  After  giving  quite  a  full  account  both  of  the 
Mount  Alto  Sanatorium  and  the  Dispensaries,  he  says : 
"  If  I  have  taken  pains  to  depict  the  noble  undertakings  of 
America  in  the  field  of  the  contest  against  tuberculosis  this  has  been 
done  not  only  in  candid  admiration  and  recognition  of  their  achieve- 
ments but  also  with  the  object  of  showing  our  country  what  energy 
and  self-sacrificing  public  spirit  can  accomplish." 
If  you  have  followed  me  in  this  somewhat  prosy  discourse  you 
will  have  noted  that  the  policy  of  the  department  in  attempting 
the  control  of  contagious  and  infectious  diseases  has  been  to  lay  the 
axe  at  the  root  of  the  tree,  to  embrace  all,  not  only  a  few,  communi- 
cable diseases,  to  insist  on  receiving  information  of  every  case,  to 
make  isolation  and  quarantine  real  and  not  perfunctory,  although 
carefully  modified  as  the  nature  of  each  disease  may  permit,  to  make 
disinfection  thorough  and  complete,  performed  with  real  germicides, 
not  simply  bad  smelling  deodorants,  and  to  use  them  where  they 
will  do  the  most  good,  to  keep  disease-breeding  organisms  out  of 
our  water  and  out  of  our  milk  as  well  as  out  of  our  air,  to  educate 
