with problems of dependency? Dr. William Healy of Boston ascribes much
of his success in getting the parents of defective and backward children
to bring them voluntarily for examination to the fact that the name of
his organization (the Judge Baker Foundation) conveys no hint of stigma
or inferiority. Here is a valuable lesson in right publicity.

A bureau of family advice such as has been suggested should be under
unimpeachable auspices from the point of view of medicine and
psychiatry; it should have the services not only of expert social
workers and experts in household management, but of doctors and
psychiatrists as well. If it could be run as a joint-stock enterprise,
in which courts and social agencies might be equally interested, so much
the better. Its investigations should be searching enough to discourage
applications from curiosity-mongers; but its services, like those of any
clinic, should be given for whatever the patient is able to pay. Its
relations, needless to say, should be entirely confidential, and as
privileged in the eyes of the law as are those of doctor, lawyer, and
priest.

It may be objected that people guard their marital infelicities too
jealously and are too loath to discuss them to come willingly to such a
place; that the idea involves a presumptuous interference in the private
lives of individuals. But neurologists know that people in increasing
numbers feel the need, under conditions of modern stress, for a safe
outlet and a chance to discuss their perplexities and find counsel.

Fifty years ago the interest now taken by the social and medical
professions in the question of whether mothers are rearing their infants
properly could not have been foreseen. The establishment of baby health
stations, or the activities of the Children's Bureau, would have been