ABSTRACT
One-fifth of all money spent on personal health care in the United States in 1964 came from public expenditures. Most of the care paid for in this way was given through large, urban, outpatient clinics. The Dispensary's clinics were conducted in downtown Syracuse in a state-owned office building that also housed the Tax Department, the Bureau of Motor Vehicles, and other assorted public offices. The Dispensary's method of delivering medical care differed in several ways from the family doctors. First, its goal was at least as much to train medical students as to treat patients. Second, it was intended to be a group of specialist services, scarcely able, because of the autonomy of its various clinics, to serve the whole man. Third, it worked in greater isolation from the remainder of the regulative system than did the family doctors. Fourth, its control over its patients was much greater than the family doctors' and the patients' reciprocal control much less.
