The Bridgeport evening farmer., 1912-05-18

pitiful problem to modern philan-
 thropy. It has soul. It has a mind
 that conditions combine to stunt. But
 the eye, through which babyhood re-
 of the impressions that mean the ear
 Hest education is lacking. One quarter of the helpless tots and larger
 children in our schools for the blind
 are doomed to lifelong darkness be- cause their eyes were not properly washed and treated at their birth. To many if not most of us the moth CT with her new born baby, thew to earth and sky,'' the bealning faced, white-capped nurse and the trained physician are a trinity so closely asso- that it is more than a surprise to learn that about 50 per cent of the births in this country are known to be at tended only by mid-wives who for the most part are dirty, ignorant, un- trained women. Ignorant of hygiene ] or of asepsis and antisepsis, but with confidence in their ability to attend abnormal cases, malpractice by .slov- enly and careless midwives is respon- sible for a large proportion of the instances of unnecessary blindness but also for death and mental and physi- cal degeneracy of children and much
 unnecessary death and invalidism Of 1 mothers as we'll. These women ex- ercising the functions of both doctor and nurse are allowed except in a very few localities to follow their call | ing unsupervised and unrestricted. In l thirty-three of the forty nine states | and territories, there is no law re- straining the practice of midwifery 1 while in three. Georgia, Alabama and Mississippi, midwives are actually al- lowed by law to practice unrestricted. 1 So far as we are able to learn the | United States of America is the only civilized country in the world in which | the life and health and future well 1 being of mothers and infants are not safe-guarded so far as possible through the training and control Of i midwives. In other enlightened 1 countries this has been made a na- 1 tional question, since the conservation of the health and life of babies and mothers is felt to be of national im- portance.
 That midwifery is logical work for trained nurses has been recognized both by the lay and by the medical public in England. Australia and New
 Zealand. In these countries the mid wife is very commonly a trained nurse, officially supervised and fre- quently working in conjunction with public health and philanthropic agen- cies for the purpose of preventing in- fant mortality and blindness. In ad- dition to acting as midwife, she gives for them adequate medical attention on the appearance of symptoms of any complications.
 In England where eleven years ago the midwifery situation was strongly analogous to ours at the present time, the problem was faced and met through the establishment of the Gen. trai Midwives Board by an act of Par lament in 1902. The midwives act forbids any woman not holding cer- tifictte issued by the Central Mid In order to be examined and licensed by this board, a candidate must pre-
 sent diploma from recognized
 training school.
 the service England has received from
 trained midwifery to concrete terms, it is significant that during the last
 nine years since the enactment of the
 midwives act, the percentage Of deaths
 among infants in that country has
 dropped from 151 in 1000 during
 1901, to 106 per 1000 in 1910. Al
 though other causes have contributed it is believed by English workers that
 the midwives act must be reckoned
 as one factor in this decline.
 By placing restrictions on the prac-
 tice of medicine and the practice of
 nursing, we are protecting only one
 half the babies in this country from blindness and other permanent in- juries. In New York State a vigor- ous effort has been made to raise the
 standard. At the last meeting of the State Medical Society a large portion of one session was devoted to dis cussion of the ways and means Of remedying the evils of the uncontroi- led practice of midwifery. New YoSa1 4dty now requires that midwives