We have spoken before of the unethical practitioner, who, while competent enough, feels himself under no obligation to protect the community from an infectious disease. There is sometimes a reason for this indifference, this failure to tell the patient he has tuberculosis, and to inform those who surround him of their danger. This reason is because many a patient is afraid to know the truth about his condition. If the physician tells him he has tuberculosis, he at once changes his doctor and seeks another who will give a more comforting diagnosis. Thus, the struggling physician, to whom this may mean the loss of livelihood and prestige, is forced to a decision between self-interest and the interest of a community which he learns to despise, because it has forced him to dishonesty. We grow cynical about the welfare of those who force us to trim our ideals. We have tried thus briefly to review the main reasons why tuberculosis is emphatically a disease which should be removed from private practice and placed under municipal control. On the one hand, this is necessary because of the nature of the disease, since ambulatory patients cannot be followed except by those able to devote their whole time to it. On the other hand, it is necessary because of the wide diversity within the ranks of the medical profession. The greater number of private practitioners are either too busy, too intent on earning a living, too indifferent, or too poorly educated to assume effective supervision of an infectious disease which requires masterful handling. And since they themselves have not been able to deal with this great issue, they should not object to placing it in the hands of those qualified to do so. The greatest contribution that the private physician can make to the anti-tuberculosis campaign, is to do what he can to hasten the advent of full municipal controls. CHAPTER VIII The Nurse in Relation to the Physician—Municipal Control of Infectious Diseases—The Nurse’s Difficulties—A Waiting Policy—Undiagnosed Cases—The Nurse’s Responsibility to the Conscientious Physician Only.