Puerperal fever, a preventible disease : a plea for the more general adoption of antiseptics in midwifery practice : an address introductory to the session of 1888-9, delivered at St. Thomas's Hospital, October 1, 1888 / by Charles J. Cullingworth.

  • Cullingworth, Charles J. (Charles James), 1841-1908.
Date:
1888
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Puerperal fever, a preventible disease : a plea for the more general adoption of antiseptics in midwifery practice : an address introductory to the session of 1888-9, delivered at St. Thomas's Hospital, October 1, 1888 / by Charles J. Cullingworth. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by The Royal College of Surgeons of England. The original may be consulted at The Royal College of Surgeons of England.

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    The numbers for the previous year (1885) were still larger. These figures are sufficiently startling, but they do not represent the whole truth. A great many deaths from childbirth are not re- turned as such, but appear under entirely different headings. It often happens that a woman dies from some puerperal disease, say, from peritonitis, and on the death-certificate the name of the disease appears without any mention of its con- nection with childbirth. This is due, partly to carelessness, partly to the reluctance of medical men to create alarm in the pubhc mind, and partly also to the uncertainty that occasionally arises in the mind of the medical attendant as to whether the fatal disease was attributable to childbirth or to some independent cause. The fact that many of the returns are inaccurate in the direction here indicated is well known to the authorities. Ever since the year 1881, letters of inquiry, asking for further particulars, have been issued from the office of the Eegistrar-General to medical men who had given certificates in which the causes of death were imperfectly stated. In one year alone, 1881, the result of sending out these letters was the discovery of 330 additional deaths due to child- birth. This question of childbirth mortality was made