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103
her eyes rendered her a potential source of danger in maternity cases; and advised
the " nurse " not to attend any more cases until her eyes were cured ; but I had no
power to enforce this advice.
This forms a striking illustration of the less conspicuous harm which frequently
results from the employment by the poor of an untrained woman to act in the capacity
of " monthly nurse." She attends the patients of both a doctor or a midwife, and
whilst both of these are trained and registered, and the latter vigorously supervised,
the " nurse " is a free lance, neither trained, registered or controlled, and is often
ignorant and superstitious. Yet both the doctor and midwife have to accept the
responsibility of the case, and are blamed if trouble arises as in the case quoted
above, as the result of her incompetence. In the interests of both the patient and
the responsible attendant, it should be illegal tor a woman to act in the capacity
of " nurse " unless she has some recognised standard of efficiency.
Puerperal Septicaemia.
Eight cases have been certified.
Three were attended by doctors, two of these patients died after a few days
illness, the other, a severe case, recovered after an illness of some weeks duration.
Five were attended by midwives; and of these, two died some days after their
admission to hospital; the other three patients all recovered, two of these having
only a slight illness.
Summer Diarrhoea.
The number of deaths of infants from summer diarrhoea was comparatively
small, and there was no marked prevalence of the disease during the whole of the
summer months.
Enquiry was made into the circumstances attending 13 deaths from this
disease, all the infants being less than eight months old.

It will be seen that only one baby was entirely naturally fed ; the mother stated
that the baby had been ill with "brain disease" for many months and had suffered
from chronic diarrhoea, which became acute, a few days previous to death.