OBSTETRICS AND ITS RELATION TO INFANTILE 
MORTALITY 
By Dr. Fernando Calderon 
Puericulture has for its object the study and the practical 
application of all those measures which tend to protect the life 
of the product of conception during its first two years of exist- 
ence; that is, during the most hazardous period in life, because 
every individual is at this time most exposed to the diseases 
that man is likely to pass through before he attains his full 
development. 
Some authors distinguish four periods in the evolution or 
development of the child, and corresponding to these different 
epochs of life, puericulture is divided into prenatal, intranatal, 
neonatal, and postnatal. Prenatal puericulture deals with such 
measures as will safeguard the existence of the embryo from 
the time it is conceived until it grows into a viable fetus; 
intranatal puericulture aims to protect the life of the fetus 
during the brief but hazardous ordeal through which the preg- 
nant woman must pass in order to deliver her child into the 
world; neonatal puericulture deals with the care of the newly 
born during the first four weeks of his life ; postnatal puericul- 
ture aims to give the proper care to the infant from his fifth 
week of life until he attains his second year of age. 
Pregnancy has long been held to be a normal process and, 
as such, demanded no special care of the mother or of her child. 
There is nothing that could be farther from the truth. The 
recent studies of Kellog bear out this statement. Thus, among 
his 4,996 cases of pregnancy he found the following complica- 
tions: Albuminuria, 361; high blood pressure, 259; definite 
symptoms of toxemia, 195; narrow pelves of various grades, 
401; cardiac lesions, 111; gonorrhea, 10; chronic nephritis, 5; 
diabetes, 3; fibroma of lower uterine segment, 30; making a 
total of 1,524 complicated pregnancies and representing approx- 
imately 30 per cent of the cases studied. These figures are 
significant, and they alone emphasize the necessity of a careful 
examination of every pregnant woman, to safeguard not only 
her own life but also that of her child, whose safety is so inti- 
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