The Training of Health Visitors

Ten years ago tliere seemed little hope of unanimity of opinion among medical officers of health concerning the qualifications of health visitors. Some administrators in the public-health service considered that general nursing training was necessary, some thought a certificate of the Central Midwives Board sufficient, while others advanced the view that it was essential that candidates for appointment should be able to ride a cycle. During the last decade many changes have occurred in the outlook of the sanitarian. Health visiting has passed beyond the experimental stage, and now has become a definite career for women, providing a field of employment the boundaries of which were daily increasing, until the present wave of reckless economy furnished a fashionable cry at the hustings. The range and the type of the work has undergone considerable alteration; the duties of a health visitor now include most of the public health activities which can best be allotted to a woman?for example, maternity and child welfare, school nursing, the visiting of tuberculosis, measles, whoopingcough, and other infectious diseases, the inspection of midwives, of out-workers, and premises where