A Social Study of the Russian German 65 
the patient and do the work about the house. Of the same speech, 
sex, and faith as those whom they attend, their services are of 
much more value to the mothers than are those of the majority of 
the doctors who commonly practice in the settlements, unless it 
can be shown that actual harm results from their work. The 
testimony of competent and sympathetic physicians, of the health 
authorities, and of the statistics so far as they reveal the facts, 
does not disclose such results. 
It is unfortunate that no attempt is made by the state to recog- 
nize the midwives and to raise their status. This cannot be done 
by passing arbitrary laws shutting them out of practice, for this _ 
would do more harm than good by depriving the immigrant of 
any medical attention except the help volunteered by neighbors. 
It would also increase the difficulty of securing birth registrations ; 
for the number of Russian German midwives is a practically stable 
quantity and the authorities can keep an eye on them, while it 
would be almost impossible to ferret out the unattended births in 
the settlement. But the state could demand the registration of 
midwives,*® it could fix a certain reasonable standard to which all 
should conform, and it could provide some means of education 
whereby this useful class of medical attendants might become a 
positive means of good.*® 
47 The Russian German midwives employ many customs belonging to 
the folk medicine of the German villages. For instance, they will not 
allow the mother to go to sleep, nor will they give her cold water to drink. 
They wash the new born child’s eyes with milk and place a cloth wet 
with whisky on its head. As a rule, these practices are harmless, based 
purely on superstition; but the people have much more confidence in their 
potency than in modern medical science. 
48 See Wile, “Immigration and the Midwife Problem,’ in Medical 
Problems of Immigration, 119-125, and Schwartz, “ Prenatal Care,” in 
Transactions of the Fourth Annual Meeting of the American Association 
for the Study and Prevention of Infant Mortality, 174-100. 
49 Since the above paragraph was written, the Superintendent of Health 
of the city of Lincoln has taken steps to provide instruction and super- 
vision for the midwives. The women were first called together and the 
city nurse explained to them in German the purpose of the Health Depart- 
ment to organize a school of instruction for them, with meetings to be held 
once a month in the North Side Neighborhood House. A series of lec- 
191 
