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of women having succumbed to Puerperal Fever whilst
under the care of certain midwives. The most regretable
circumstance connected with these deaths is that a woman
in East Battersea did not earlier heed the warnings she
received, to the effect that she was wanting in the requisite
knowledge of the treatment of such serious cases, and of
the necessity there existed for employing the most
scrupulous cleanliness, particularly as regarded her own
person. The results would have been deplorable enough
had this woman discontinued her functions after the occurrence
of the first two or three fatal cases, but to have
persisted after so many had fallen victims to her ignorance
and carelessness, was, to say the least of it, most reprehensible.
The Health Officer of the Western Division of
Battersea in reference to this matter very justly remarks
—and in this he fully bears out the observations of his
colleague :— "It is the duty of every person, whether
midwife or surgeon, to cease attending lying-in women
when he or she is unfortunate enough to have cases of this
description;" and he refers to the opinions of Dr.
Churchill upon the matter, and mentions the fact of
medical men having changed every article of clothing,
shaving off even the hair of their heads and whiskers, and,
after abstaining from attendance upon such cases for weeks,
returning to this kind of practice with the painful result
of seeing their very first case prove fatal. After this it is
not going too far to say that nurses and midwives ought
to be placed under some kind of control in respect to such
cases.
In the Wandsworth Local Summary, the Health
Officer of that Sub-District offers some remarks upon the
excess of zeal of School Board Officials in sometimes
enforcing upon parents a too early return of their sick and
convalescent children to school without insisting on Medical
certificates, and before all danger of conveying to others
infectious or contagious diseases had ceased to be apprehended.
The remarks here referred to, it is submitted,