416 JOURNAL OF PROCEEDINGS [Mar. 7

dogs. It is likely that we have saved, in this way, about two
lives in three years, possibly one life each year. The money
has been well spent, but $1, 000 a year spent upon diphtheria
antitoxin would save twenty times as many lives and would
prevent a thousand times as much sickness. Perhaps the State
should not furnish free antitoxin to all persons suffering with
diphtheria. Local governments should do so without any re-
striction as to the poverty or wealth of the beneficiaries. Some
of the local governments furnish free antitoxin, but the county
governments either do not furnish it at all, or else there is so
much delay in obtaining it that lives are sacrificed by delay,
and the spread of diphtheria is twice or three times as
extensive as it would be if the State or the locality
were at all times prepared. The State Department should
have instant command, not only of diphtheria antitoxin, but
of any and every other immunizing material, not in large
amounts, nor for the purpose of relieving local governments
of their manifest duty, but enough to satisfy emergency needs
and to avoid the more serious consequences of delay when
local governments are caught unprepared.

The State Department of Health should be ready at a mo-
ment's notice to start for the remotest corner of the State,
equipped with any immunizing or curative material for any
infectious disease. At present we can furnish antityphoid vac-
cine and antirabic virus. We are dependent on the State
Vaccine Agency for smallpox vaccine, and for diphtheria
antitoxin we have to depend on the local governments, which
have, in general, not one dollar's worth of antitoxin on hand
and cannot get it within twenty-four hours.

In partial relief of these and other necessities, we ask for
$5, 000 each year for two years.

The Bacteriological Laboratory—An appropriation of $3, 500
for the year 1916, and a like appropriation for the year 1917,
is asked for the support of the bacteriological laboratory of
the State Department of Health. This laboratory was started
in 1898 on an appropriation of $2, 500. Later the appropria-
tion was raised to $3, 500, and since 1912 has had its share of
the $24, 000 appropriated to five Bureaus. The work of the
laboratory has far outgrown these resources, and it is now
necessary to tax the other Bureaus for the support of the
bacteriological laboratory. The Bureau of Sanitary Engi-
neering and that of Food and Drugs would be obliged to main-
tain laboratories out of their appropriations if there were
no such laboratories already in existence. It is, therefore,
not unfair to tax these Bureaus, and it is certainly more