AT the forty-third annual meeting of the American Public Health Association and the fifteenth annual conference of sanitary officers of the State of New York at Rochester, N. Y., a symposium on the administrative control of infectious diseases was held on September 10, 1915, under the joint auspices of the Section of Public Health Officials and the Department of Health of New York City. The impetus for such a conference on the oldest, best developed, most widely recognized and generally effective of the functions of civil health authority was an inquiry in person and by mail correspondence between the director of the Bureau of Preventable Diseases of the Department of Health of New York City and the late Dr. John S. Billings and officers of health of a considerable number if not all of the cities of 100,000 population and over in the United States. This exchange of information as to the prevailing administrative policies and regulations intended for the control of the common acute communicable diseases revealed striking and inconsistent variations in such matters as notification, verification of diagnosis, placarding of premises, isolation and quarantine periods, terminal fumigation, disposal of