IN VIEW of the current interest in the vaginal smear and the optimistic hopes aroused by recent accounts of its usefulness, a preliminary report of a study being made by the Massachusetts Department of Public Health to evaluate the method may be helpful in clarifying its present status as a diagnostic test. The technic for the detection of uterine cancer by means of vaginal secretions was first described by Papanicolaou1 in 1928. In 1943 Papanicolaou and Traut2 presented evidence of the value of this method for demonstrating carcinoma both in patients before symptoms had appeared and in those in whom . . .