MATERNAL MORTALITY
[To the Editor of the SPECTATOR.] SIR,—A great deal of nonsense is being written just now ori this subject. As " Crusader " says in your issue for May -5th, Pasteur long -ago pointed- out the streptococcus as the cause of puerperal fever--the greatest maternal danger in childbirth. This practically disposes of the contention that inadequate teaching of obstetrics is at fault, for surely every medical Student is nowadays well grounded in antisepsis and asepsis. I speak of what I know, for I have practised midwifery, often under the most unsatisfactory conditions, in three continents and never lost a mother.
During the War I had charge of an Institution that kept three midwives busy, but can only remember having been called upon by them for help in two cases in eighteen months— one that of a woman admitted moribund from influenza, and the other that of a monster. Had these three women bees{ asked if they feared puerperal fever in their practice they would have felt insulted. Long years ago, the great Matthews Duncan, of the London Hospital, said : " Every man who loses a woman in child-birth should go back to his hospital and learn his work, and .if, thereafter, he loses another he should abandon the practice of midwifery as a danger to society." Cleanliness is all that is necessary to safety. But it must be meticulous surgical cleanliness.
If the public only knew this simple truth they would oblige those attendants who cannot make the necessary time for this surgical cleanliness to give up their dangerous careers.—I ani,'
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