(3) The visiting nurses or public health nurses, employed by a Board of Health or by private agencies for the care of contagious diseases in the home and also for the nursing of the sick poor whatever their malady, have found it more and more difficult in late years to confine their work wholly to physical aid. They have been forced to take account of the patients' economic, mental, and moral difficulties, to extend their work beyond the field of nursing proper, and thus to approach very closely to the field of the social worker. It is my own belief that the frontier separating visiting nurse and medical social worker should be rubbed out as rapidly as possible, until the two groups are fused into one. The visiting nurse must study the economic and mental sides of the patients' needs, and the social worker must learn something of medicine and nursing. Then the two groups will be fused into one, as indeed they are fast fusing at the present time. SOCIAL WORK _PART_ I MEDICAL-SOCIAL DIAGNOSIS SOCIAL WORK CHAPTER I THE MEDICAL STANDING, DUTIES, AND EQUIPMENT OF THE SOCIAL ASSISTANT I have said in the Introduction that _home visiting_ may easily and properly spring up in connection with various institutions; for example, in connection with the schools, courts, or factories of the city as well as with the dispensaries. But it is essential in home visiting, no matter what institution it is connected with, that the social assistant should be distinctly recognized as _part of the machinery_ of that institution, or, in other words, as one of the means by which that institution does its work. If she is connected with the schools, she should be a part of the school system alone, not responsible to a Board of Health or to any other outside agency. So in the type of home visiting which now particularly concerns us, it is essential to make it clear from the outset that the social worker is a part of the medical organization. She is one of the means for diagnosis and treatment. All that she does from the moment when she first scrapes acquaintance with the patient is to be connected with the condition of the patient's health. She is not to pursue independent sociological or statistical inquiries. She is not to be the agent of any other non-medical society. It is unfortunate even if her salary should be paid from any source other than the medical institution itself.