To the Editors of the Crimson:

The need of a College House to which students may go in case of illness with the sense that it is temporarily a home, and the certainty that they will find there home comforts, good food, good nursing and such medical attendance as they may require or choose to command, has been sufficiently shown by the individual experiences of students themselves and by the recent reports of the Medical Visitor of Harvard College.

In the report of Dr. G. W. Fitz, published in the Graduates Magazine, December 1895, to which attention is directed as containing valuable suggestions as well as statements of facts in regard to illness among students, there is a table showing the cases brought to the notice of the Medical Visitor during the college year preceding.

This table gives the number of slight illnesses, mostly remedial by rest, an even temperature, a regulated diet and good nursing, as over 1100; injuries requiring surgical treatment, 78, and miscellaneous-non-contagious diseases-535. November, January, February and March were the months showing the largest sick lists, and the average number of students in these months was respectively 45.7, 51.3, 46.5, 80.8. Of contagious cases there were during the year 108 only.

The well-to-do student living in comfortable rooms can in case of illness summon such medical adviser as he may select and procure a trained nurse, if such nursing is needed; but it does not at all follow that he would not be better off in a well-equipped college house where especial provision is made for the comfort and welfare of the sick, and where he can equally have his own medical adviser and a special nurse as well if required, paying, in addition to the fees of the physician and the nurse, as he would pay them in his own rooms, a certain sum to the college house as he would pay for a room in a private hospital; the advantage over a private hospital being that the college house will be a part of and under the control of the University, and an institution in which he has a personal interest.

For the student of moderate means and the man working his way through College the college house on the plan of an infirmary is an absolute necessity, and there is no benefaction in connection with college life which appeals more justly to the generosity of would be donors than provision for the student to whom sickness is really a disaster.

The establishment of an infirmary or college house is therefore a purpose which shoudl bespeak the interest of every college man and every college woman as well, for there is proportionately quite as much need for a similar provision for Radcliffe.

To wait for a large gift which shall found the infirmary as a memorial, or to depend upon an allotment from funds which may be devised for charitable purposes, is to defer the accomplishment indefinitely, and would deprive the infirmary of the general and sustained interest in its helpful work which would accrue from a large number of contributors. It is earnestly to be hoped therefore that both individual and concerted action may be taken by students and graduates to procure the sum, estimated at $50,000, necessary to build, equip and partially endow the Harvard Infirmary.

Sincerely yours,

CLARENCE J. BLAKE.Boston, June 20, 1897.