46 ADDRESS 



of an arm contracted during birth is an affection difficult to heal. 

 Wounds of the scalp, the shoulder, the nares, and other parts 

 of the surfaces may lead to blood poisoning. Many die of them. 

 They should be avoided ; they can be avoided in goodly numbers. 

 Nor are we at the end of our possibilities. A contracted pelvis 

 that will permit a baby to be born only with wounds and frac- 

 tures, and interrupted circulation and sepsis, and the almost 

 positive certainty of death within a few days, may be circum- 

 vented in future by csesarian section. A few weeks ago I listened 

 to the reports of an obstetrician in country practice who saved 

 practically every one of 11 cases women and infants by that 

 operation. It warms your heart to learn things that never were 

 done before and never must be omitted in the near future. 



Many babies die of asphyxia, or, what is worse, they contract 

 paralysis, epilepsy, or idiocy for life. A few moments more or 

 less in which the baby does not breathe and cry may determine 

 its future. In hundreds of cases of idiocy in small children I 

 have asked my usual question, and received the unanimous 

 answer that the doctor or midwife was absent, or they had to 

 work over the baby before he cried with the result of convul- 

 sions, or stiffness, or sickly smiles after months only. Sure they 

 would better be dead. But asphyxia has no right to exist, either 

 to kill or to maim. 



The blood vessels of the baby are very fragile; hemorrhages, 

 large and small, are frequent. Pressure on the head, on and 

 within which the vessels run in very superficial grooves, causes 

 blood to burst through under the scalp with no, or very little, 

 danger to the baby ; or in the cavity of the skull, with great dan- 

 ger to health or life. In most cases they are the result of pro- 

 tracted labor. That can be avoided. 



Many newly-born have died from so-called melsena large 

 amounts of blood being vomitted or passed. They were often con- 

 sidered unavoidably fatal and the babes did die, almost every one 

 of them. Some depended on ulcerations in the infant stomach, 

 caused by the curdling of blood in the smallest blood vessels 

 under the influence of a diseased heart. Many cases are caused 

 or sustained by the lack of coagulation of the infant blood. But 

 within a year Dr. J. E. Welch, of New York, has taught us how 

 to save many by the injection of bbod serum taken from some 

 adult, thereby adding to the defectve infant blood a ferment 

 which renders it more coagulable. There is new knowledge 

 which is new power. A number of such new-born babies have 

 been saved from certain death this very year; almost all such 

 cases will be saved in future. 



