The present mode of teaching midwifery in London / by G. Ernest Herman.

  • Herman, G. Ernest (George Ernest), 1849-1914.
Date:
1896
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: The present mode of teaching midwifery in London / by G. Ernest Herman. 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 PRESENT MODE OF TEACHING MIDWIFERY IN LONDON. By G. ERNEST HERMAN, M.B. Bond., F.R.C.P., Senior Obstetric Physician to the London Hospital, etc. Dr. a. Martin, of Berlin, in an article on medico-social ques- tions in England, speaks as follows concerning the teaching of midwifery in the English medical schools :— “ The arrangements of the medical schools in England for midwifery education are very imperfect. If we look away from the long-renowned lying-in hospital, the Dublin Rotunda, and the very limited similar opportunities in Edinburgh and Glasgow, we find that the medical student has nothing analogous to our midwifery clinics. The student is taught midwifery theoretically. He learns practice among the out- patients. To these the professor of midwifery hardly ever goes. In London, for instance, these professors live in the far west, miles away from their hospitals, and from the midwifery out-patient departments attached to them. The teaching of the students in midwifery is almost exclusively in the hands of young assistants, who have been qualified one or at most two years, live away from the places in which the patients are delivered, and are, or should be, called if the labour does not go on naturally. It depends, therefore, entirely upon the pleasure of these young assistants whether the student is or is not clinically instructed in the mechanism of labour, the aseptic management of childbirth and child- bed, and all further questions. It is to be considered also that there is at hand no trained midwife or monthly nurse. The student must more or less instruct himself. It says much for the value of the theoretical teaching that these young men do not have more disastrous experiences than in fact actually happen.” In this paragraph Dr. Martin correctly represents how midwifery is taught in England. Suppose medicine and surgery taught in like manner! Conceive that the teachers of medicine and surgery gave lectures, but never went into