ra 
x, 1h, G Calderon: Tropical Obstetrical Problems 883 
to see them go to the hospitals for confinement or to call physi- 
cians, nurses, or qualified midwives to attend them in their homes. 
However, it is necessary to remember that the strongest attrac- 
tion for them is the free medical assistance given by the Govern- 
ment in the Philippine General Hospital and in the out-patient 
service of the Department of Obstetrics of the College of Medicine 
and Surgery, and in order that a larger number of women may 
be attended in these two maternity services, it is necessary to 
increase our facilities, enlarging the maternity ward of the 
Hospital and increasing the appropriation for maternity work, 
especially in the out-patient department. In this way we shall be 
ready to meet the real needs of the Filipino mothers, having more 
physicians and nurses to go around the entire city and to handle 
our cases in the hospital. 
Obstetrics in the provinces, however, is an entirely different 
matter, as there are no influences, such as exist in Manila, to 
abolish superstitious ideas concerning midwifery. It is evident 
that to accomplish such an object there should be provincial 
maternity institutions with staffs of physicians, nurses, and 
qualified midwives to show them the modern way of living and 
of taking care of themselves and their children. This side of 
the problem has already been taken up by the Legislature, and 
as a beginning a law has been passed creating the School of 
Midwifery in connection with the School of Nursing of the 
Philippine General Hospital, where young women from the 
provinces are given a special course in obstetrics to enable them 
to practice scientific midwifery in the provinces. When the time 
comes when the graduates of the School of Midwifery begin to 
spread throughout the Philippines, and when the provinces are 
divided into sanitary districts having physicians, nurses, and 
qualified midwives to look after the health of the people, we 
shall have accomplished the aspiration of the country, which 
is to wipe epidemics away from these Islands, to save the lives 
of a great many parturient women, to solve the very important 
problem of our high infant mortality, and to make the Filipinos 
a healthier. and stronger people. 
