The recent death of Edna P. Alter in a trolley wreck near Pasadena, Cal., removes one of the younger workers in the field of organized charity. Miss Alter knew every phase of work in the homes of the poor for she entered the Hudson district of the New York Charity Organization Society as district nurse in 1908, later rounded out her preparation for the work of organized charity by a summer course in the New York School of Philanthropy, and became assistant agent in that district. In the fall of 1910 she rose to the responsible position of secretary of the Associated Charities of Pasadena. Leo G. MacLaughlin, president of that society, speaks of her work as “sympathetic, kindly, warm-hearted and keenly intelligent. She was one of the founders of the local Associated Charities and her work won favorable attention over a wide area.” * * * * * A few years of school dental clinics have made “toothbrush drills” a fairly familiar idea in many cities. It took the Toronto public nurses, or rather their supervisor, Lina L. Rogers, to originate another drill quite as unique and important. Since last October the school children of Toronto, in squads of twenty have practised daily “nose-blowing drills” and the effect on the freshness of the atmosphere of the schoolrooms has been so noticeable that the teachers have become assiduous in seeing to it that no child comes to school unprovided with a pocket handkerchief. They often, indeed, themselves order the drills without waiting for the coming of the nurse. The effect of the drill is perceptible already on individual children, in cases of catarrh, and the doctors predict that it will have an appreciable effect in time in lessening adenoids and other throat and nose affections. It was Miss Rogers, who has recently become Mrs. W. E. Struthers, who, when a nurse at the Henry Street Settlement in New York in 1902 was chosen to demonstrate at the expense of the settlement in four local schools the need of municipal school nurses. This she did with such success that within a month the Department of Health took over the financial responsibility and extended the work, making her supervisor. With a subsequent seven years’ experience in this capacity she went to Toronto in 1909, where she has done pioneer health work in the schools. These are now fully equipped with school nurses and with dental care, one of the four clinics now carried on in connection with the school system having been equipped with a model outfit at the expense of the enthusiastic nurses themselves. [Illustration: MRS. W. E. STRUTHERS]