The Archbishop of Canterbury presided over a meeting convened by
the Association for Promoting the Training and Supply of Midwives on Thursday week. The Archbishop laid stress on the two serious aspects of the situation created by the passing of the Midwives Act of 1902,—first, that the existing supply of properly trained women was inadequate ; and second, that the practice likely to be bbtained by such trained women would not yield a living wage for those who had no other means of subsistence. The magnitude of those evils was indicated by Sir Dyce Duckworth, who declared that there were some three thousand preventible deaths annually due to ignorance, generally of midwives; by Dr. P. Macdonald and Dr. Nimmo Walker, who stated that fully a fourth of the cases of blindness in the community were due to the same cause; and by Mr. Wynne Baxter, the Coroner of East London, who mentioned that during the last six years he had held inquests on three hundred and sixty-three children who bad died within twenty-four hours of birth, and on two thousand one hundred and sixty-eight who had not lived twelve months. A. resolution was moved by Lord Balfour of Burleigh, and unanimously adopted, declaring that the extension of the Association was an urgent public duty, and that its objects demanded national and generous support from all those to whom the health and welfare of the nation appealed.
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