The Colored Race 131 



perilling both mother and child. It is not uncommon to find 

 a midwife vigorously rubbing the abdomen of the poor 

 puerpera, in view of helping the pains, and producing a more 

 or less complete version of the child. The woman is delivered 

 in a small room, all air and light shut out, and the atmosphere 

 reeking with the emanations of the anility of the neighbor- 

 hood, who have come in to view an event which has always 

 the charm of a novelty. To these cases the physician is fre- 

 quently called to meet all possible forms of dystocia, danger- 

 ous to both mother and child. Puerperal convul.sions arc 

 more common among them than among the whites, and the 

 mortuary tables show twice the mortality among the colored. 

 I have m3^self attended twenty-two cases of this disease, 8 

 whites and 14 colored, with two deaths among the whites and 

 six deaths among the colored. Of the children, four died 

 among the white and nine among the colored. In many cases 

 I was only called in after much precious time had been lost.* 

 My case book will show all possible presentations and compli- 

 cations. I may mention placenta prsevia, ruptured uterus, 

 large uterine fibroids to which the negress is especially liable, 

 puerperal septicaemia and peritonitis, neglected retained pla- 

 centa and all its dangers. And I may mention lacerations of 

 the cervix and perineum, and vesicovaginal fistula. I men- 

 tion these because there is a common belief among those who 

 do not know, that the negress is like her African sister, who, 

 living in a savage state, is free from these complications of the 

 modern civilized woman. She is not only liable to them, but 

 from neglect and improper treatment suffers more than the 

 white. This must affect her prolificness with even greater 

 force in the future. In going over the reports in the last nine 

 years, I find the figures too meagre and the diagnoses often 

 vague, so that it has but little value to us, except as showing 

 that the mortality among the colored exceeds that of the 

 whites, about in the proportion of 2 to 3. 



*See my paper in the Medical Record for Oct. 24, 1891. 



