The midwife in England : being a study in England of the working of the English Midwives act of 1902.

  • Van Blarcom, Carolyn Conant.
Date:
1913
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: The midwife in England : being a study in England of the working of the English Midwives act of 1902. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by the Francis A. Countway Library of Medicine, through the Medical Heritage Library. The original may be consulted at the Francis A. Countway Library of Medicine, Harvard Medical School.

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    Investigations of the condition of midwives made in various cities during the past few years—notably in New York, Chicago, Cleveland and Baltimore— all disclose much the same information concerning these women. Although there are in America many competent midwives who have received careful training in European schools, reports from various parts of the country indicate that the majority of those practising here are dirty, ignorant and untrained. The extreme ignorance of some of the more unfit of these women is suggested by the superstitions which they foster; one, for example, will advise the mother to wear a string of bear's teeth to make the child strong; another that in cases of tardy labor it is beneficial to throw hot coals on hen feathers and place them under the patient's bed; another that it is flying in the face of Providence to bathe the infant before it is two or three weeks old; while others recommend that such articles as cabbage hearts, bacon rinds, beer, etc. should be included in the baby's dietary. This type of midwife knows nothing of hygiene, asepsis or antisepsis and is often practically responsible for the death and invalidism of mothers as well as the death, blindness and mental and physical impairment of infants. Visits to the homes of these women fill one with dismay, for only too often one finds that a midwife with a large practice is herself a dirty, un- kempt person living in a squalid tenement. A deplorably large group is ex- emplified by the old woman of 80 who declared, I am too old to clean; too weak to wash; too blind to sew; but, thank God! I can still put my neighbors to bed. Only too often the American midwife assures her patients that it is natural for babies to have sore eyes, and she prescribes such remedies as milk, lemon juice, lard, raw potatoes, scraped beef, saliva, etc., and when the babies go blind, she piously declares that it is the will of God! Unhappily, even this is not the worst aspect of the problem as a whole, for in some of our isolated rural districts the absence of any provision for the care of mothers and babies gives rise to very distressing conditions. From one such locality one learns that when a woman goes into labor, the first passing teamster is hailed, or perhaps a member of the family hurries down the road for the nearest tanner or blacksmith, or anyone else who through total ignorance will fearlessly rush in to meet the great emergency. The results of this practice— dismembered infants lying on the floor and badly injured mothers—are too dreadful to describe, but they can be imagined by those who know the value of trained work. Constrasted with this we hear from another similar district of a nurse with obstetrical training who has volunteered her services for visiting work among the mountain poor, and who during the past few years has delivered about 400 infants. She has given nursing care to the mothers and babies in her charge and has taught the mothers in even the poorest huts how to take care of their