“The success of this venture proved to be so satisfactory that the Boston workers have gone still further toward supplying the needs of mothers and babies by adding to the prenatal care, care at the time of birth and afterwards until the mother is again on her feet. Through the courtesy of one of the largest Boston hospitals, a clinic is held weekly in its Out-Patient Department. The hospital is in no way responsible for the clinic, simply lending the room in which the clinics are held. The medical care at the clinic and in the patients’ homes is given by obstetricians from the staff of the Boston Lying-in Hospital. Medical examinations are made during pregnancy at the clinic, and a nurse visits and instructs the patient during the period of expectancy, always under the direction of a physician. The delivery is performed in the home by a physician connected with the clinic, at which the nurse also is in attendance. She visits the mother and baby twice daily for three days subsequent to the delivery, gradually making her visits less frequent thereafter. The doctor pays from two to four postnatal visits, as may be needed. For this prenatal, natal and postnatal, medical and nursing care, $40.00 is the entire amount charged, and the work is self-supporting with the nurse’s time filled. Prenatal care, alone, is given if desired by a physician and with visits at the clinic included; the charge for this service is $10.00.” I refer to the work in Boston, particularly, as its inauguration by Mrs. Putnam marked the beginning of this branch of public-health work in this country, though to-day the same kind of service is available to expectant mothers in many of the large, and some of the smaller cities. Visiting nurse associations, the country over are giving postnatal and infant care (in some instances, excellent prenatal care, too), often providing for or assisting with the deliveries, and effecting an enormous saving of life and health by so doing. But the number of patients who are cared for by each organization is relatively so small that even the aggregate of the work done reaches a pathetically small proportion of the mothers and babies in the country as a whole who need care. The first comprehensive effort, in the United States, to meet the need of all expectant mothers in an entire community, was inaugurated in New York City, in 1918, by the Maternity Centre Association, the chief function of the organization being to coordinate the work of agencies already in existence. This Association was formed as a result of the work of the Maternity Protective Committee of the Women’s City Club and the Maternity Service Association of Physicians and Hospital Superintendents.