ind a county in all England in which the mortality of mothers
from diseases pertaining to child-birth has reached even a quarter of
the ratio stated by this medical writer. "From all causes together NOT
FOUR DEATHS IN A THOUSAND BIRTHS and miscarriages happened in England
and Wales during the first year, seventy-five years ago, that official
statistics were gathered; it was a death-rate of five in one thousand
the following year."[1] We are not questioning the value of surgical
cleanliness; we dispute only the justice of exaggerated and misleading
statements concerning any fact capable of scientific demonstration.
There can be no doubt that less than half a century ago, in the
maternity wards of certain hospitals and in the experience of certain
men, there was a death-rate from such ailments far above the average
experience of the country; but it was solely due to the ignorance, the
criminal blindness and obstinacy of certain men in the medical
profession. But a little over seventy years ago, when Dr. Oliver
Wendell Holmes pointed out that this saddest place of mortality was
due to want of care on the part of medical men, it was two professors
in two of the largest medical schools of America who opposed him; it
was Professor Charles Meigs, of Jefferson Medical College in
Philadelphia, who laughed to scorn his warnings, and held up to the
ridicule of the medical profession the theories that are now accepted
as facts. With such men as teachers of medical science, what wonder
that for women about to become mothers certain hospitals of that day
were little better than slaughter-houses, to enter which was to leave
hope behind?[2] But the experience of such hospitals is not the basis
upon which Science rests conclusions when they may be ascertained by
reference to the statistics of a nation. The murder-rate of
Philadelphia is not to be determined by that of one of its slum
districts. If, a century ago, a slave-owner of Jamaica owning ten
negroes, whipped one of them so severely that he died, should we be
justified in declaring that in the West Indies the murder-rate of
slaves was 10 per cent., or "ten in a hundred"? Its absurdity is
manifest. When, therefore, a reputable writer for a magazine largely
read by wives and mothers puts forth the statement that by reason of
some experiments the death-rate of diseases incident to maternity has
been reduced "from ten or more mothers out of every hundred," leaving
it to be inferre