284 MEDICAL SECTION 



who took up midwifery, and who afterwards went in for it 

 as a vocation. They learned midwifery, but they did not 

 go to the relief of working mothers, and the problem was 

 how to get these mothers cleanly and decently attended to 

 afterwards. It was not a question of how many people 

 they got through examinations. They wanted those who 

 would look after the working mothers, and she would like 

 them to have one year's training, and, better still, two years'. 

 She believed she represented the only hospital in England 

 that so far had gone in for a really prolonged training that 

 was the Home for Mothers and Babies at Woolwich. They 

 would not receive anybody for less than a year unless they 

 had had some general training beforehand. They tried to 

 make it two years, and that would be better, but they were 

 met with the practical difficulty that so long as the Central 

 Midwives Board demanded only a three months' theoretical 

 course, and demanded of pupils twenty cases in six weeks, 

 if they could get them in, it was practically impossible to 

 get young women to take so long a training. They were 

 out of pocket 'all that time, and could not afford to do it. 

 Being profoundly ignorant they asked why they should go 

 in for two years' training at their Home when they could 

 get the training elsewhere in three months. Therefore it 

 was one of the most uphill struggles which could be 

 imagined to try and prolong the period of the training of 

 midwives, and although the hospital was started with that 

 object yet until the Central Midwives Board altered its 

 regulations it would remain an uphill work. Dr. Davis 

 spoke about midwives advising mothers with regard to 

 artificial feeding. If all midwives had the supreme advan- 

 tage of working under the medical men who were present, 

 and who would give them a definite answer, she would most 

 warmly and entirely agree with what was said, but having 

 worked as a district midwife in Somerset for eight years 

 and in other parts of England she was afraid she must say 

 she found the ordinary medical practitioner was not of great 

 use in regard to this. If he was asked for an answer he 

 probably would not give it, whilst if he did give an answer 

 it was generally to tell them to give Swiss milk. She said 

 with all deference, for she was not a doctor but only a 

 midwife, that until they had advanced the education of the 

 medical practitioner she would decline to put the future of 

 all the very poor babies into his hands. If the babies were 

 the doctor's own patients well and good, but if the midwife 

 were always to ask the doctor it meant that the mothers 

 would not employ the midwife very much. She maintained 

 that the doctor with all his other patients, and with all his 



