To men of this stamp, the tuberculosis nurse owes nothing. Her business is to do her duty, even when it brings her to cross-purposes with them. She has been taught her work by the most advanced and progressive members of the medical profession, and in the homes of patients she is but carrying out the orders of these abler men. That they themselves may have no direct connection with the patient does not alter the situation. She is their agent, not the agent of the hold-overs from a passing régime. Therefore, we look to the former to establish their agent, the public health nurse, in a position of unassailable dignity and authority. CHAPTER IX Obtaining a Diagnosis—The General Dispensary—Sputum Examinations—Tuberculin Tests—Registration of Cases. =Obtaining a Diagnosis.= As we all know, it is not the business of the nurse to make diagnoses, but it is emphatically her business to select cases which should be diagnosed, and to send them where this may be done. Therefore, if a community supports a tuberculosis nurse it will also find it necessary to establish a place where she may send her patients for examination—a special dispensary for the recognition of pulmonary tuberculosis. If there is no such dispensary, in charge of a capable physician, she may find it exceedingly difficult to obtain a diagnosis for her patients, without which her hands are tied. She cannot preach fresh air and prophylaxis to a person who has nothing but a “heavy cold,” no matter how serious may be the symptoms in connection with it. If the physician in charge of such a case is unable or unwilling to make a diagnosis, it is necessary to have some court of appeal to which the patient may be sent the moment he gives up his doctor or his doctor gives him up. As we have said before, the nurse must never influence a patient to change his doctor—on the contrary, she must be exceedingly punctilious in this regard—but when the patient is fickle and inconstant in his allegiance, she must take advantage of the opportunities offered to send him where he may be skilfully examined. The question of the special dispensary will be treated more fully in another chapter—here it is simply our purpose to show the need of such a place.