ing and breaking of its fibres, is improved by sprinkling with salt before sweeping. It should be washed with salt and water.

Carpets should not be swept with salt, as is so often recommended as a protection against moths, because too much moisture is retained in the wool, which tends to make it rot from dampness.

For laundry purposes salt is equally useful, although salt and soap are incompatible, the latter being precipitated by the former, and therefore should not be used together..

Colored cotton fabrics, when new and clean, should be immersed in a boiling solution of salt and water in the proportion of three cups of salt to one gallon of water, and let stand until cool that they may not subsequently fade when they are washed. This precaution is necessary inasmuch as salt sets the soil as well as the color and because of the incompatibility of soap and salt. Black and navy blue cotton fabrics, if not too soiled, may be washed in a hot solution of salt and water, then rinsed in a deep bluing water and dried in the shade.

Ink stains on linen should be washed in a strong solution of salt and water and then sponged with lemon juice or vinegar or treated as an iron-rust stain.

To remove red iron rust, cover the spots with salt, moisten with lemon juice or oxalic acid solution, and let stand until dry. Repeat this process, the solution being a cup of water to a teaspoonful of oxalic acid. Spread over a large pan of boiling water and touch the spots with a stronger solution of oxalic acid or with muriatic acid and dip immediately in the boiling water. Rinse until the rust disappears, and then in water in which a little borax has been dissolved or in ammonia to restore

the color of the fabric, if bleached by the acid process.

Wine stains should be moistened, sprinkled with salt, and then pour boiling

ric disappears. If the fabric be linen, rub the salt in well, moisten with boiling water and lay on the grass for three or four hours, or until the stain is gone.

Blood stained cotton fabrics should be soaked for several hours in a solution of

salt and water, wrung out and washed through a fresh supply of the brine, again wrung out and laundried in the usual way.

To clean cloth coat and dress collars from the white and the grease stains, dissolve salt in ammonia, rub well and rinse with plain water or with a weak solution of vinegar and then with water.

Sponges are greatly improved and cleaned by soaking in salt and water for a few hours and then washed.

An ostrich feather that has been wet should be sprinkled with salt and shaken before a hot fire until dry. It will become fresh and curled.

For a misted windshield or window use a mixture of the following proportions: One teaspoonful of salt, two tablespoonsful of water and four tablespoonsful of glycerine; apply with a soft rag in a smooth, thin coating and they will remain clear.

The length of this article prohibits further enumeration as to the every-day uses of salt, but to sum up briefly: It has been shown that the first step in the process of cleaning with salt is to render the substance to be removed soluble by the action of some chemical agent, and secondly to form an emulsion capable of being definitely diluted by water-some solution or substance holding atoms in suspension which have a greater affinity for the atoms of the substance to be removed than that in which they are being held-and thus by direct union to release them from their hold upon the substance or fabric to which they adhere; and, finally, that when they are thus decomposed, they are easily separated from the materials to which they

Christmas in the Hospital Practical Hints from Various Hospitals. Planning the Christmas celebration for a hospital is not the easiest thing in the world, but given a happy resourceful guiding spirit Christmas festivities are possible in every institution. The more that nurses can be permitted to do in regard to the Christmas celebration, the better. The effort to brighten the season for those who must be confined in a hospital, to help them to forget for a time the hardship of separation from home and family, will react, on the workers themselves in ways that are wonderfully wholesome.

One superintendent makes a point every year of inviting one or two members of the families of private patients to share the Christmas dinner in the patient's rooman act of thoughtfulness that is always appreciated.

In a hospital where there are large wards the decoration of the ward adds much to the spirit of festivity so much desired. Where the hospital has a department of occupational therapy convalescent patients will be delighted to assist in preparing the decorations.

Making Christmas mottos by cutting letters out of cardboard mounted on green tissue paper and placing these where an electric light bulb from behind illuminated the letters was used in a Pittsburgh hospital last year with charming effect.

A number of large hospitals have made. a special feature of Christmas celebration for the Out-Patient and Social Service Department. In this plan children are included who have recently been in the hospital or are in attendance at the dispensary, also children belonging to families in

whom the social service workers are especially interested. Useful gifts, such as mittens, shoes, scarfs, sweaters, stockings and underclothes-contributed by friends of the hospital, are chosen though the toys are not left out.

Be sure to include in your collection of Victrola records all the Christmas music you can possibly afford. There is a superb assortment to be had. Be sure to include the old familiar favorites, "Adeste Fideles," with chimes; "Hark the Herald Angels Sing," "Silent Night, Holy Night;" "Joy to the World," "The Toymaker's Shop," "O, Come All Ye Faithful," etc. Nothing helps more to create the desired Yule-tide atmosphere than music, and these records can be doing duty for weeks before Christ

mas.

The custom is growing of having the nurses and internes make up a Christmas choir for carol singing through the hospital. Quite often a director for this music can be secured from some nearby church. If a portable organ can be secured, it adds much to the impressiveness of the music.

Try having a Mrs. Santa Claus to accompany Mr. Santa Claus on his rounds, she can be just as round and jolly and altogether fascinating as he and the innovation always adds interest.

In one hospital in the middle west every man and woman received a personal letter with Christmas greetings. The names of the ward patients likely to be in the hospital on Christmas day had been secured by the King's Daughters and the letters which were handwritten on holiday stationery accompanied a gift of fruit.

In large wards where there are a considerable number of convalescent patients a

delightful feature may be introduced of having an elocutionist give a program of readings suitable for Christmas-Dicken's Christmas Carol, The Birds' Christmas Carol and Van Dyke's story of "The Other Wise Man," are old-time favorites that never fail to charm.

There are difficulties in the way of celebrating Christmas in a hospital filled with patients suffering from contagious diseases of many kinds, but these difficulties have been partly overcome by having a "travel"travelling Christmas tree' "mounted on a small hand truck go through the corridors stopping in front of the entrance to each room and ward while an "Aseptic" Santa Claus distributes gifts to the patients mostly children.

As a part of the Yule-tide festivities in one hospital each class of nurses provided an evening's entertainment for the other nurses, internes, and clerical workers. One class got up a circus with numerous sideshows and stunts, another gave a minstrel show and the other class produced a play which was a burlesque imitation of a popular play that had recently been in the city.

If you have a "hospital poet" in your family use him to the utmost in planning the Christmas for the hospital workers. If you have not such a useful personage look around and try to discover him (or her) because he can add much to the joy of the occasion.

In every hospital which has large wards, some special scheme of decoration may be planned that will be a joy to work out, and that is well worth the effort. If the room has not a real fireplace, there are artificial fireplaces to be bought for the occasionlighted with red light from an electric log. Snow scenes, an artistic Indian tepee, a gipsy camp, a Christmas boat instead of a tree all afford scope for ingenuity in decorative effect.

In one small hospital a Christmas pie was one of the features of the celebration for nurses. The pie was made in a small

wash tub. The top crust was heavy brown paper. From underneath the edges were numerous strings, one or more for each person, attached to which was a "booby" gift intended as a practical joke, which called attention to some special quality or incident in the recipient.

The Hospital Situation in Great Britain

The need for hospital authorities to study carefully the health insurance laws that are being worked out in various States is emphasized by a writer in the International Journal of Surgery. In discussing "The Hospital Situation in Great Britain," he states his belief that the hospitals of Great Britain are in an extremely critical condition. Practically all of them, he says, are grievously lacking in funds, and as the vast majority of them are wholly dependent upon public contributions for support, and as this is not freely forthcoming, their situation may be characterized, without much exaggeration, as desperate. The reasons for this unfortunate state of affairs are numerous. The most obvious causes are that the war threw much extra work upon them; that contributions decreased during that period; and, above all, that the cost of maintenance has nearly doubled.

However, he claims that the influence of the Compulsory National Insurance Act is one of the chief causes of present financial embarrassment. Under this act, medical practice has been revolutionized. The effect of the Insurance Act, for the year or more that it was in force prior to the war, was to increase the demand for that kind of treatment which the hospital alone can supply; that is, owing to insurance practice, the aid of the specialist was by far more frequently called for than was formerly the case. It must be borne in mind that no fewer than 14,000,000 people of Great Britain fall within the scope of the insurance. Possibly something like two-thirds of these before the act came into vogue were private patients. Now that they are pa

tients for whom the medical attendant is paid at the rate of $2.25 a head annually, if anything serious is diagnosed, they are promptly turned over to the hospitals, where they can be treated by the best specialists for nothing. Consequently, the working of the Insurance Act greatly increased the financial strain upon the hospitals. There is at the present time a conglomeration and accumulation of circumstances which press very heavily upon them, and all sorts of projects are being suggested to relieve this

pressure.

The hospital supported by voluntary contributions (the voluntary hospital system) is vigorously upheld and as vigorously criticized. "The advocates of the continuation of the voluntary hospital system hold that the resources of voluntary effort are very far from exhaustion, and that by better co-ordination they cannot only be utilized to much greater effect, but can be very considerably enlarged. It is contended that finance is a main, but not the only factor in the problem. Administrative reform is of equal importance, and it is to such reform that the British hospitals must chiefly look for their salvation or regeneration. It seems that the end should be first to finance the annual hospital expenditure out of an organized and controlled flow of subscriptions, and to insure the maximum of benefit to the public out of the funds raised. It should then be possible to learn with a very reasonable degree of accuracy what the hospital deficiencies are, and to devise means for making them good."

For years the introduction into Great Britain of the American pay hospital or a pay-ward system has been discussed pro and con, but for some reason not easy for us to understand on this side of the Atlantic it has been slow of adoption. Eventually it must come, though perhaps never in our generation, to the same extent as in this country and Canada. Even with the pay

the American hospitals in general are in no condition to bear any unusual strain such as might easily result from an ill considered health insurance bill in which the effect on hospitals had not been carefully studied and guarded, before the law came into existence.

The Training of a Nurse

In an address before the Catholic Hospital Association, Miss Anna C. Jammie summarized the points made as follows:

First, the Student. (a) Give out more detailed information to the applicant concerning the school. (b) Aid her in the selection of a school with a view toward the type of work she wishes to pursue after graduation. (c) Admit the students at some stated period, which should be uniform at least in each particular state.

Second, the Curriculum. (a) Let the school follow honestly the curriculum it has established, whether state or standard, and relate the instruction to the practice. (b) Establish confidence in the student that the school will uphold its standard of teaching and that nothing will interfere with carrying out its provisions. two-year basic course upon which may be built a third year in a special branch for which a special certificate may be given.

(c) A

Third, some modern theories in conducting the course. (a) Commence with instruction and limit the practice during the early months. (b) Let the practice follow as early as possible on the instruction. (c) Lectures to teach from the standpoint of nursing and within the grasp of the student. Make every step of the way clear and show where it relates to the work at the bedside. It is there that the most impressionable teaching is done and no opportunity should be lost to the student at this point. Too often it means merely work to the student when it could be made a very live, useful and unforgettable lesson. (d) Day time classes, and when students are not fatigued. (e) At least one well prepared nurse in

How Hospitals May Help Quack Doctors

That a hospital, though its board of directors, superintendent and medical staff may have the best intentions in the world but at the same time may constantly help to build up the clientele of the quack doctor by neglect to properly provide for medical cases, was emphasized by Dr. Haven Emerson of New York at the Michigan Hospital Association meeting. He cited the survey of hospital conditions recently made in Cleveland which showed that 75 per cent of all the hospital beds in Cleveland are surgical beds. Such a situation, he holds, affords excellent opportunities for the quack, the charlatan and the patent medicine manufacturer to prey on the medical patients whom the hospitals have overlooked in their provisions for the needs of the sick.

Research in the Field of Occupational

Therapy

Devereux Mansion at Marblehead, Mass., is to have connected with it in the future a small experiment station for the study of the problems of invalid occupation. It has been made possible through a friend and is to be under the general direction of Dr. Herbert J. Hall, one of the pioneers in this field of therapy. The plan is to maintain a studio and workshop where expert designers and craftsmen may work out practical ideas which may prove of value in occupational work in hospitals. It is hoped also through these experiments to assist in accuracy in prescribing and in standardizing in some degree the work of patients.

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A New Type of Ether The most important development in the field of anesthetics during the month is the announcement that the new type of ether based on the work of Dr. James Cotton of Toronto is now being prepared in the du Pont laboratories on a commercial scale.

The new anesthetic, which is a highly

dition of gases, has the following characteristics: (1) The property of inducing and maintaining anesthesia with practical freedom from post-operative nausea, and (2) the property of inducing and maintaining analgesia (conscious insensibility to pain) as distinguished from anesthesia (insensibility to pain plus narcosis).

The numerous tests which have been conducted with the new ether at various hospitals and clinics indicate that aside from its value in ordinary surgical practice as an anesthetic, its analgesic properties open up an entirely new field; namely, the large class of operations which are now performed with a local anesthetic or without any attempt whatever to eliminate pain.-Exchange.

We Must Help Children to Resist
Disease

During the next year, morever, the country can not afford to have any preventable illness. The war is over, but the scarcity of physicians and nurses available for the civilian population will continue. The children will appreciate the significance of this situation. They will realize that it is their patriotic duty to be as strong and well as possible, to build up healthy, disease-resisting bodies, whose cells are stronger than the disease germs which attack them, ready, like a well-drilled. home defence army, to resist any attacks of the forces of ill health. Never before was there such a time as the present for driving home the lessons of personal hygiene. We must strike while the iron is hot. The call to health service is an emergency call.

It is, of course, desirable that all of the children suffering from any serious physical defect whatever should have medical attention. As an emergency measure, however, we should give consideration, first of all, to that great group of under-nourished children whose condition is strikingly below par.-Bureau of Education, Washington,