Another example of effective and direct tuberculosis work is afforded by the Association of Tuberculosis Clinics of New York City which includes women on its board of directors and has, for its executive secretary, Miss F. Elizabeth Crowell. The importance of an association like this lies in its ideals for prevention and in its stimulation to the individual clinics composing its membership to increase their work among children and their family care. It is of comparatively little use to treat a single adult in a family and neglect the other members. Children may inherit the tendency to the disease or be infected before the adult member appears for treatment or the family’s mode of living may create the same disease for all its members. It is therefore very direct and effective work to make family care the basis of prevention. Partly as a result of the conferences held by this Association, “the Department of Health has enlarged and strengthened its clinical work, has reorganized its system of registration and has increased both the quantity and quality of its nursing service.”
In various ways, women have sought to control the spread of this dread disease. They did much to abolish the common drinking cup and have worked for the establishment of sanitary drinking fountains in public squares and sanitary faucets in public schools and public buildings. They have agitated against spitting in public places, and have seen their agitations rewarded with anti-spitting ordinances; and they have organized junior and other leagues to help with their enforcement. They have pressed upon the attention of the authorities the necessity for medical inspection in the schools and for open-air schools; and Mrs. Vanderbilt of New York has built some splendid open-air homes for tuberculous patients, which have served as models for later attempts to deal with the housing requirements for the permanent cure of tuberculosis.
Testimonials to the initiation and pressure by women along these lines, all of which are of the utmost importance in checking the ravages of tuberculosis, come from all quarters.
The Buffalo Federation of Clubs, the organized women of Minneapolis, the Women’s Municipal League of Boston, and the Civic Club of Allegheny County, Pennsylvania, are among the groups that have insisted upon open-air schools for children either infected with the germs of tuberculosis or so anæmic that they might readily fall a prey to infection.