Part 25

These ladies have not even the advantages which the idlest student can hardly help availing himself of—and his minimum is ‘three years.’ Yet this is the course proposed to enable a woman to ‘practise midwifery,’ even in the sense in which we understand a man to ‘practise midwifery,’—to enable a woman to become a physician accoucheuse (for these ladies are expressly styled ‘accoucheuses’) in the sense in which we understand a man to be a physician accoucheur.

The paper states, doubtless with truth, that these ladies ‘are the best taught accoucheuses hitherto accessible to the English public.’ May we not hope that, in future years, the society will be enabled to give ‘accoucheuses’ still better taught ‘to the English public’?

LONDON: PRINTED BY SPOTTISWOODE AND CO., NEW-STREET SQUARE AND PARLIAMENT STREET

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Footnote 1:

Exclusive of the case of a poor woman who was delivered in a cab, and died in the hospital of post partum hæmorrhage.

Footnote 2:

‘So was confined in No. 4 ward.’

Footnote 3:

Patient died 48 hours after delivery.

Footnote 4:

Patient died on her way to the hospital: not included in the calculated rates.

Footnote 5:

One case had gastric fever on admission, and in two cases puerperal peritonitis came on after instrumental delivery.

Footnote 6:

In 1868, 69, 70, there were in Liverpool workhouse, 1,416 deliveries, including 20 premature, and 6 deaths from all causes, of which 3 at least were non-puerperal. The total death-rate was only 4·2 per 1,000. There were 13 London workhouses in which, in 5 years, 2,459 deliveries, but no deaths in childbed, took place.

Footnote 7:

Exclusive of a fatal case delivered in a cab.

Footnote 8:

One delivery took place in a cab, and the woman died in hospital.

Footnote 9:

Husson, ‘Étude sur les Hôpitaux,’ p. 254.

Footnote 10:

Tables XI., XII., XIII., abstracted from the ‘Statistique médicale des Hôpitaux de Paris.’

Footnote 11:

This drain was shown on the Plan from which Plate I. is taken.

Footnote 12:

Premature births: Seven months, 8; deaths, 5; six months, 6; deaths, 6; five months, 1; death, 1.