Page:American Journal of Sociology Volume 9.djvu/671

 A MODEL MUNICIPAL DEPARTMENT 647

(5) The trained-nurse system, whereby the children are encouraged to return to school as speedily as possible, or, where suffering from light cases, receive skilled treatment at the schools without the necessity of exclusion, and the help in the care of sick children which the nurses are able to give the parents at the home.

(6) Co-operation, where necessary, between the inspectors and nurses and the truant officers.

(7) The discovery of the prevalence of "trachoma," and the best method of treating this most contagious of all eye diseases.

(8) The new Gouverneur Eye Hospital established by the department for the treatment of trachoma.

(9) The New York system of paid medical-school inspectors ($1,200 per year), which is greatly superior to the voluntary system as practiced in Boston and Philadelphia, because of the greater control and system which the department is thereby enabled to exercise over the school work.

The " Summer Corps" This system of a summer corps of tenement-house doctors was started many years ago, in the late seventies, but has been steadily improved and extended. It consists of a corps of physicians working under the direction of the sanitary superintendent, at a salary of $100 per month. Many of the men who act as medical inspectors of schools during the school months are employed on the "Summer Corps." They are divided into district squads, covering all the boroughs of Manhattan, the Bronx, and Queens. It is the duty of each doctor to make a house-to-house canvass of all the tenements assigned to him in his district, and to offer free medical advice and treatment to the sick children, each man covering his district as frequently as possible. The "Summer Corps" has generally established free dispensaries at the large city recrea- tion piers, and co-operates as far as possible with numerous private charities, distributing free tickets for the St. John's Guild floating hospitals, etc.

The work has been a perfect Godsend to many and many a poor family in the hot summer months, and several of the physi- cians have told me that no work in their lives ever seemed to do