ral states making it possible for counties to
support a public hospital just as the larger cities have done for many
years. Here clinics may be held from time to time, to which eminent
specialists may be brought for the diagnosis of different cases, to the
advantage of both patient and physician. It is quite impossible for a
busy country doctor to maintain a private laboratory and to provide
himself with all the expensive equipment for making examination and
tests of blood, sputum, urine, for X-ray examinations, etc., but the
hospital may have all this equipment at his service.

One of the most important features of the domestic program of the
American Red Cross is the promotion of so-called "Health Centers," a
movement which is also sponsored by the American Medical Association and
other national health organizations. Such a health center may include a
hospital with well equipped laboratories and clinical facilities, or it
may be nothing more than a room in a small village, equipped with scales
for weighing children, with first aid kits for accident cases, and used
for occasional clinics for the examination of babies and children of
pre-school age and for classes in home nursing or first aid; but every
community of any size should have some place which will be a
headquarters for its local health Service, equipped as may be most
practicable to meet its needs, according to the size of the community.

Curiously enough the local physicians, who would be most helped by such
improved health facilities and whose practice would be benefited by
them, are often their chief opponents. The leaders in the medical world,
who are keen for all practicable means of improving the public health,
heartily support the "health center" movement.

We are coming to the time when the maintenance of health will be
regarded as a public function just as education is now provided for all
the people and supported by them. That country people are alive to the
need of better health facilities is shown by a resolution of the recent
(February, 1922) Agricultural Conference called by President Harding at
Washington. Its committee on farm population reported:

"The safeguarding of the health of the people in the open
country is a first consideration. Any program that looks
toward the proper safeguarding of health must include
adequate available facilities for the people in the open
country in the way of hospitals, clinics,