OBSTETRICS IN THE PHILIPPINE ISLANDS. 



By Fernando Calderon. 1 

 {From the Department of Obstetrics, Philippine Medical School. 



TXTUODUCTION. 



More than two years ago, in a lecture which I gave in the Liceo de 

 Manila, by request of the Asociacion Feminista Filipina, I had an op- 

 portunity to express my personal opinions on the interesting problem of 

 infant mortality in Manila and at the same time to propose means for 

 ameliorating this condition. I believed the most efficacious measure, 

 along with popular education, to be the organization of a good service 

 of midwives, with a lying-in dispensary to which the poor women of 

 this city could go for assistance. In this manner we would remedy the 

 necessity which compels women, neglected by fortune, to give birth to 

 their children in miserable habitations lacking every hygienic facility 

 and to place their lives and those of their new-born infants at the mercy 

 of ignorant midwives, audacious in the abuse of obstetrical practice. It 

 is necessary to establish a school for midwives who, when sufficiently 

 instructed, would be excellent disseminators of the teachings derived from 

 the practice of modern obstetrics. 



The suggestion then made did not fall on barren soil, for the Philippine 

 Commission, at the instigation of Dean C. Worcester, Secretary of the 

 Interior, appropriated the funds necessary for the building in Manila, 

 within a short time, of, a pavilion hospital planned according to modern 

 standards. One of these pavilions will constitute the beginning of the 

 future lying-in hospital of Manila. 



However, we are confronted by another question of equal importance. 

 When the obstetrical pavilion is erected, can we cormt on the women of 

 the lower classes, who form the majority of the population of these 

 Islands, attending this new clinic and renouncing once for all the 

 irrational practices of ignorant midwives and illegal practitioners? 

 Before we can respond in the affirmative, it will be necessary for the 

 Philippine Medical School and the Bureau of Health to agree to lead 



1 Read at the Fifth Annual Meeting of the Philippine Islands Medical Associa- 

 tion, Manila, February 29, 1908. 



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