66 



AMAND ROUTH, M.D., F.R.C.P., ON MOTHERHOOD, 



most imperative need. This need, supplied with regularity and 

 love, may well lay the foundation of the beautiful camaraderie 

 which is sometimes seen between a healthy sympathetic mother 

 and her growing boys and girls who are all " chums " together 

 right up to their adolescence. The close mutual attachment 

 involved in a six months' lactation must influence the child's 

 mental and moral development, and may well inculcate such 

 virtues as pimctuahty, patience, self-control, obedience and 

 reverence, and thus unconsciously help to form a child's 

 character. 



I think also that the nursing mother's character is purified, 

 ennobled and fortified by the loving sacrifice of her time and 

 energies to this most absorbing of all maternal obhgations. 



Compulsory Health Certificates for ^Iarriage. 



I should Hke to see the day when both sexes contemplating 

 marriage should be required to produce a doctor's statement 

 that they are free from tuberculosis, venereal or any other 

 infectious disease, but I fear the nation is not yet ripe for such 

 a hygienic proposition. I am glad to say, however, that the 

 conscience and knowledge of the nation are progressively clearer 

 on this aspect of worthy parenthood, and few now marry if they 

 know they are unfitted to rear children, and many parents desire 

 some assurance of the good health of their would-be son or 

 daughter-in-law . 



Sterility. 



In some cases motherhood is denied to a wife from causes 

 beyond her own or her husband's control, but this is not the 

 occasion to deal with the anatomical or physiological conditions 

 which in either sex tend to thus reduce the birth-rate of the 

 nation. Suffice it to say that the various abnormal conditions 

 which may prevent motherhood, especially during the first few 

 years of marriage, can in many cases be successfully remedied. 



The Midwife's Part in Ante-Natal and Neo-Natal 

 Hygiene. 



A midwife does not come into direct association with the 

 expectant mother till she is engaged to attend at the approach- 

 ing confinement. 



