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Show COMMISSIONE& OF INDIAN AFFAIRS. 19 I found their way to the agencies every year, onIy to be pushed to the back of the shelv& and gather dust there because unused. In not a few cases physicians who took real interest and pride in their pro-fessional work among the Indians would go down into their own 'slender purses for the prices of remedies which they felt they must have; and all who try to carry modern methods into their practice have been obliged to spend hours of valuable time compounding drugs which in any large place can be bought at the nearest apothe-cary's, already compounded, at no greater cost than the united prices of the elements assembled. It was with a view to reforming some of these. conditions that Dr. Gwrge S. Martin, physician to the Blackfeet Agency, was authorized last winter to eriter into correspondence with his leading colleagues in the Indian medical service regarding desirable changes in their supply list. As a result, 20 obsolete items were stricken from the accustomed schedule and 65 new ones substituted, bringing the aggre-gate of 426 items up to a pretty close relation with the best profes-eional. practice of our day. At the annual letting of contracts for medical supplies last ApriI, moreover, the Commissioner had the assistance and advice of a board of three experts to pass upon the samples and bids submitted. Prof. John H. Long, of Northwestern University, Illinois, a chemist of national reputation, and Mr. Wil-helm Bodemann, a prominent pharmacist of Chicago, examined each ?ample as usual with reference to its purity, general excellence, and value as compared with price, while Doctor Martin, in the light of more than a dozen years' experience in a difficult Indian field, passed finally on each from the point of view of its adaptation to the pecul-iar requirements of practice on a reservation. At the close of their labors in this immediate.line the three gentlemen were constituted a committee to go over the whole subject of supplies for theIndian medical sixvice and make recommendations for the future _guidance of 'this Office in its wntracting and distributing functions. The advance made last spring, it is hoped, will prove only the beginning of a new era of activity in this domain, till the physicians at Indian agencies and schools shall stand on a footing not unlike that of their contemporaries in other branches of the public service of the United States. What this Office is trying to do in the matter of improving its med-ical supplies it is attempting also in certain other lines of contract purchasing, the details of which need not be rehearsed in the present report. Suffice it that in every category this year the samples have been passed upon, not only by inspectors acquainted with the trade standards of quality and prim, but by experienced employees brought in from the field who are familiar with the uses to which each article will be put and with the special points of excellence or the most nota- |