The recent appointment of a visiting committee for Stillman Infirmary arouses somewhat the same mingled feelings of hope, tolerance, and mild amusement which formerly accompanied the appointment of another Hoover commission. By the addition of this committee to the staff, the University now has a visiting committee for every week in the year, ranging over work which varies from tasting food to testing professors. It is not to be wondered at, then, if this fifty-second visiting committee is welcomed into the official family with a certain blasé reception.

The purpose behind the appointment of this committee was to get a body of experts who might periodically investigate the Infirmary, and recommend whatever measures it thought necessary to bring the Infirmary to fuller efficiency. There is one and only one advantage in such a body, and that is that the responsibility to improve Stillman and make its facilities more adequate is centered in one particular group. It is too easy for regular staff members of the Infirmary to let things slip along in the same groove, not only from mere inertia, but because they are too close to the organization itself and interested more in running it than in picking it to pieces. The tendency, only too apparent in the past, to let antiquated equipment outrun its usefulness, is illustrative of this attitude.

A hospital must, of all institutions, be equipped with the most modern appliances, and capable of meeting the demands of the whole population which it serves. The new visiting committee for Stillman ought to feel deeply the responsibilities which it carries of checking carefully on the functioning of the Infirmary and insuring to the students medical service of the very highest calibre.