On the mortality of childbed and maternity hospitals / by J. Matthews Duncan.

Date:
1870
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: On the mortality of childbed and maternity hospitals / by J. Matthews Duncan. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by the Royal College of Physicians of Edinburgh. The original may be consulted at the Royal College of Physicians of Edinburgh.

    21/204 (page 5)
    tioners may equally deliberately and honestly say of the same case, This is a childbed death i^i.e. from child- birth or metria) ; and there is no means of always settling the question between them either scientifically or by authority. What, then, is to be done ? The fact is, that all attempts at ascertaining scientifically or exactly the desiderated quantity, the mortality of child- bed, must meantime be given up. There is no method of even getting facts upon the nature of which the j)rofession are agreed. I could prove this by tedious references to writings of obstetricians of high authority, and by other arguments, but I believe it is quite un- necessary. There are many valuable results obtainable, which, though not exactly what is desired, are very nearly so, and extremely useful, because the best obtainable with a view to guidance in great practical questions which demand an immediate answer of some kind— the best that can be got. Now, in the present instance, we can get the deaths in childbed indisputably, though not those of childbed; and there will be, in my opinion, no very great difference between the two cjuantities. The quantity wanted is the mortality of childbed {i.e. of childbirth and metria) : it is un- attainable. The quantity attainable is the mortaUty in childbed {i.e. of childbirth and metria, and every other influence producing a fatal result in the interval between the commencement of parturition and the end of the lying-in or childbed—that is, a period of four or six weeks, or any other time that may be