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6. and receive kindness and sympathy from the nurses, they are in general quick to accept such care and will travel a long distance for it. A case was observed in the Navajo country in which an old woman came voluntarily from nobody knew where to the hospital to have her eyes treated for trachoma. Such voluntary action is not uncommon ; many other instances could be cited. How else can the fact be accounted for that 57.6 per cent of all births on the Oneida Reservation in Wisconsin between August, 1926, and May, 1927, took place in the agency hospital? And that 29 per cent of all births from July, 1926, to May, 1927, at the Crow Agency, Montana, occurred in the hospital? Where such splendid work is being done, the evidence discloses a sympathetic personnel. On the other hand, one often hears complaints of neglect and even maltreatment.
7. The physical plant of the hospital has been responsible for a certain amount of this difficulty. The construction has not been good and the arrangement is generally inconvenient. The basic plan in most of these institutions is two large wards, an arrangement that does not permit of meeting the shifting needs of surgery, confinements, and acute infectious diseases.

A policy in the past has been to salvage abandoned: forts and other buildings and to convert them into hospitals, regardless of their location and the suitability of construction. These buildings are frequently located at long distances from convenient transportation centers, where the minimum amount of contact with the outside world is possible. Sometimes the old buildings are entirely unsuited to hospital use. In the name of economy money and paint are poured into old buildings resulting in the end in the same old building, still unsuited to the needs for which it was intended.

The government has recently seen the short-sightedness of the policy in the matter of the location and construction of hospitals, and the Indian Office has formulated a plan whereby a hospital center is to be situated at Fort Defiance, Arizona. This decision is wise, as a hospital there can very adequately administer to the needs in the Navajo country. If the building plan will conform to accepted standards in hospital planning, equipment, and administration, it will be a commendable step in the right direction. To accomplish these results, however, a much larger appropriation will have to be made than is now planned.