Christmas seals, is interested in the eradication of tuberculosis by educational methods, early diagnosis, nursing service, promotion of preventive legislation and appropriations for clinical and hospital services. Airs. Sadie Orr Dunbar for many years executive secretary of this organization is now (1940) on leave of absence as national president of the General Federation of Women's Clubs with headquarters at Washington, D. C. The tuberculosis death rate of Oregon has gradually been lessened until it is now among the lowest in the world.
Critics of the State declare that the high percentage of industrial accidents makes the maintenance of numerous hospitals necessary, but constantly diminishing epidemics and low infant and general mortality rates seem to indicate consistent and reasonably thorough efforts to safeguard and improve public health. Oregon has made conscientious attempts to check venereal diseases, through the establishment of clinics for the treatment of gonorrhea and syphilis, and through the passage of a law which requires physical examinations before marriage licenses can be obtained. The state's experiments in the field of cooperative medical care have attracted nation-wide attention, and thousands of persons belong to group health associations, which provide preventive medical service, surgery and hospitalization at low cost.
Conditions in the institutions for the mentally ill are less favorable. Both the Oregon State hospital at Salem and the Eastern Oregon State hospital at Pendleton are overcrowded, and the effect of economic cataclysm is evident in the steadily increasing number of commitments since 1930. These institutions supplanted—and improved—a system under which before the mentally ill were cared for under contract or by a private asylum in Portland. Both hospitals provide educational facilities, medical and dental care, and vocational therapy, as does also the Oregon Fairview Home for feeble-minded and epileptics, located near Salem.
Approximately 2000 children annually receive care in institutions supervised by the State Child Welfare Commission, whose functions, by act of the 1939 legislature, are being absorbed by the State Welfare Commission. The bright record for child welfare has been smudged occasionally by scandals arising from the efforts of certain institutions to regulate placements of orphaned or abandoned children for purposes of profit alone, but these are exceptional cases.
Portland with more than one-third of the state's population, has many child placement organizations, juvenile clinics, orphanages, foundling homes and shelters for unmarried mothers and their children. Out
