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HOSPITAL AND PATIENT
the treatment recommended is not a doctor's fad, but a tangible good
within his own reach.
    The social worker under whose care he is put goes to his home
and investigates conditions there. She talks with the members of
his family, makes them realize the danger he is in and the necessity
for the treatment prescribed. She investigates the possibilities of
his sleeping out of doors, and if there are no facilities, persuades the
family to move to a place where there is an available balcony, roof
or backyard. The bureau keeps a record of desirable flats whose
landlords are willing to let them to tubercular patients. She teaches
the patient the precautions necessary to avoid communicating in-
fection. She investigates his finances, consults with his family as to
ways and means, and if outside aid is found to be absolutely necessary,
interests the proper societies or individuals in the case.
   After the treatment is begun, she makes frequent visits to the
patient, encouraging him and acting as guide, counsellor and friend
to the entire family. If it is found possible to send the patient to a
warmer climate, she helps him to make suitable arrangements and
finds friends for him at his destination, that he may not feel himself
an utter stranger in a strange land. All this outside work is done
by unpaid social workers, women who give either half or the whole
of their time to it.
HE bureau has recently established a department for the benefit
      of neurasthenics,-patients for whose illness the doctors can, after
      thorough examination, find no adequate physical cause. Such
patients, usually women, are turned over to the bureau for treatment.
The cause is assumed to be mental and the social workers try to dis-
cover and remove it. They make friends with the patient, get her
confidence and then fnvestigate all the conditions of her life. So
many mental causes produce actual disease in women!-'such as the
habit of worrying, domestic friction, self-indulgence in despondency
and bad temper, brooding over wrongs, remorse for real or fancied
sins, self-centered lives, lack of courage to face adversity, emptiness
of mind and heart and a host of others. The sympathy and helpful
interest of the social worker itself acts as a powerful tonic; it is every-
thing to those poor souls to feel that they are really of importance to
someone. The woman is persuaded to take more fresh air and such
diversion as is possible; some change of work or of scene is managed
for her; irritating conditions of home life are often done away with;
sometimes she is led to forget her own sufferings in work for others.
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