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62
Puerperal Fever was the registered cause of 10 deaths,
(against 10, 5 and 8 in the preceding three years respectively)
eight of them in the Town sub-district. Three of the deaths
were of women between fifteen and twenty-five years of
age; four between twenty-five and thirty-five, and three
between thirty-five and forty-five. In addition to these
10 deaths, other 7 (five of them in the Town sub-district)
were registered as having occurred in " childbirth,"
against 14, 10, and 8, in the preceding three years
respectively. Puerperal fever is a communicable disease
depending upon " blood poisoning," whereas other causes of
death connected with childbirth, are, so to say, accidental e.g.,
hemorrhage ("flooding"). The deaths registered as having
been caused by diseases and accidents associated with parturition
(17) were equal to about 4 6 per 1,000 live births, against
6.2, 4.0, and 4.3 per 1,000 in the preceding three years respectively.
The notifications of puerperal fever were nine only, ten
deaths having been registered from this cause. Two of the
notified cases, of which one proved fatal, occurred in the
practice of two midwives (the one being pupil of the other)
concerned with the patients of a lying-in hospital. The
infection in the second case was to all appearance conveyed
by the midwife. Bearing in mind the disastrous series of
cases of this disease upon which I reported in 1883, when a
verdict of manslaughter was returned by a Coroner's jury
against a midwife, under circumstances set out in my fourth
and sixth reports for that year, I have ever since felt it my
duty to warn nurses, and all other women concerned with
these painful cases, of the responsibility they incur by attending
parturient women until after a period of three or four
weeks, and without disinfection of their persons, clothing, &c.
This course was adopted in respect of the cases notified in
1893, with satisfactory results, there having been no spread of
the disease.