Sometimes they walk through fields and pastures on the last lap of the journey. Numerous indeed are the reasons for home visits - visits, all of them in the interest of better health and longer life. In a weather beaten home, the public health nurse stops to see an expectant mother, making certain tests and counseling with her about her diet, and the preparation of the layette. In a leaking log cabin she inspects an irritable infant who hasn't formed proper feeding habits. Seven miles down the road a pasty, inert boy with hookworms is the object of her investigation, and across the river she looks in on a child about to recover from scarlet fever.
Farmers quit their plowing to wave as the health nurse passes by.
Until she's out of sight, playing children call greetings to the passing blue-clad figure. With appreciation based on experience, these rural folk regard the health nurse as a friend whose help oftenmeans the difference in life and death itself. Take for instance the mother of the premature four-pound infant found by the nurse on a home visit in Northeast Mississippi last month. On what she considered a regular visit to a prenatal case, the nurse happened in at a strategic moment. No one had been in attendance.