If the nurse cannot be established in connexion with the local Health Department, she will yet be responsible to a group of public-spirited citizens, which group will undoubtedly include many advanced and enlightened physicians. This group of people will represent advanced public opinion on the subject of tuberculosis, and the authority which the nurse gets from them will be of almost equal value to that which she would get from the municipality. Municipal authority, or the authority of enlightened public opinion, is a dangerous thing to oppose. =Municipal Control of Infectious Diseases.= In the case of smallpox, diphtheria, or scarlet fever, the private practitioner attends the patient under the immediate supervision of the Health Department. Thus, in diphtheria and scarlet fever, he notifies the Department of each case that comes under his notice. A municipal physician is at once sent to take cultures from the patient’s throat, as well as from all the other members of the household. He placards the house, and instructs the family in such preventive measures as shall insure their safety and that of the community. The patient is then left in the charge of the original physician, who notifies the Health Department when, in his opinion, the infection is over. His opinion, however, is verified by the municipal physician, who takes another series of throat cultures, and ascertains, quite independently, whether or no the danger is past. If it is, he orders the placard taken down, and arranges for the fumigation of the house. In the case of smallpox much more drastic measures are observed. The patient is summarily removed to quarantine, and all those who have come in contact with him are vaccinated and kept under observation for a definite period. In this way the strong hand of authority protects the community from infection—the private physician has been merely the means of calling attention to the danger. The time will come, indeed it is rapidly approaching, when enlightened public opinion will demand this same care in the matter of tuberculosis. By reason of the chronic nature of the disease, the care given must include long-continued supervision, extending if need be, over months and years. This supervision will be given by municipal physicians and nurses. Furthermore, the private practitioner will no more resent this, nor consider it interference with his private business, than he resents municipal care of smallpox or scarlet fever. The readjustment of the point of view is necessarily slow, but it is coming, none the less. Those of us on the firing line, however, who daily witness the loss and sacrifice due to this slow readjustment, cannot but wish for revolution instead of evolution in medical ethics.