A very small drop of thin benzole balsam is now placed in the centre of each cover, and a cleansed slide gently lowered over one in such a position that both covers may be mounted on a single slide. As soon as the slide has been sufficiently lowered to come in contact with the drop of balsam, it spreads by capillarity, and draws the cover close to the slide without the slightest danger from air bubbles being engaged, and the slide may at once be inspected by a _dry_ objective. I have found it necessary to use an objective at least as high as one-fifth or one-sixth, with central illumination without diaphragm, as cases will frequently occur where the staining is so faint, that with a lower power they will escape observation, though a good, wide angle, four-tenths inch, will show them well when strongly stained. I have endeavored to explain the method with perhaps too strict a regard to detail, but am sure that one who follows the various steps once or twice cannot fail to acquire the necessary technique without occupying more than fifteen minutes of working time; that is to say, five minutes to the first staining, and then the following morning to prepare and mount for observation. 171 GATES AVE., BROOKLYN. ADDRESS TO THE GRADUATES OF THE LONG ISLAND COLLEGE HOSPITAL TRAINING SCHOOL FOR NURSES, DELIVERED JUNE 12, 1888. BY GEORGE G. HOPKINS, A.M., M.D. _Ladies and Gentlemen and Class of 1888_: We are apt to claim the trained female nurse as the outcome of the more rational treatment of disease, in modern times, but this is wide of the truth. So far as I can ascertain, in my researches among the ancient Vidas of Hindostan, and the literature of Egypt, Greece and Rome, I find no allusion to female nurses as a class, until the third century of the Christian era. Surgery and medicine had attained a high degree of perfection, many operations which to-day we claim as new to the nineteenth century were successfully performed 4,000 years ago; but the special nursing of them seems to have been done by the medical student, or by the practitioner himself. The earliest record I can find of women devoting themselves to the care of the sick, and attending to all the duties of a trained nurse, is that of Empress Helena, mother of Constantine the Great. This noble woman, who lived nearly fifteen hundred years ago, not only founded a hospital and endowed it, but herself, with the ladies of her court, there gave the most devoted and tender care to the sick poor. The Emperor Valens presented the most beautiful grounds and buildings in the neighborhood of Cæsarea to Archbishop Basil, “for the benefit of the poor whose bodies were afflicted with disease,” as being those who stood most in need of assistance. And as early as A. D. 373, the Archbishop had organized at Cæsarea an immense hospital, called the “Basilides,” which Gregory Nazienza thought worthy to be recorded among the wonders of the