A report of the practice of midwifery, at the Westminster General Dispensary during 1818 : including new classifications of labours, abortions, female complaints, and the diseases of children, with computations on the mortality among lying-in women and children, and the probability of abortion taking place at different periods of pregnancy, &c., by A.B. Granville ... 8vo, pp. 220, 1819.

Date:
[1820]
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: A report of the practice of midwifery, at the Westminster General Dispensary during 1818 : including new classifications of labours, abortions, female complaints, and the diseases of children, with computations on the mortality among lying-in women and children, and the probability of abortion taking place at different periods of pregnancy, &c., by A.B. Granville ... 8vo, pp. 220, 1819. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by The Royal College of Surgeons of England. The original may be consulted at The Royal College of Surgeons of England.

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    23 3 ■. 5, •■cl ]4 Cl c)' c;i !i. i; th < i. i t Dr. Granville on the Practice of Midwifery. couclieur, which induces them to trust too much to time and nature, and to rely on them until nature becomes exhausted. Several cases, therefore, which, by more timely interference, would only have required manual assistance, now demanded in- strumental. The more immediate superintendence of ac- coucbers over the midwives in lying-in hospitals, enables them to restrain or prevent these occurrences, which cannot be easily effected where women are attended by midwives at their own homes. The same circumstances, only more widely extended, influence the whole of the puerperal state,and render the ratio of mortality much greater than that in private practice. Yet it is remarkable, that only four of the b'40 are stated to have died after labour, and the whole of these after passive labour; which makes the proportion of deaths only 1 in i60, whilst the hills of mortality for London make it amount to I in about lOfl, as an average for the last few years. Of those four deaths, one hap- pened in the woman attacked with convulsions; in another, the patient had been suffering from phthisis pulmonalis; the third, “ the only patient (says the author) whom 1 have lost from pe- ritonitis in the course of the twelve months, was that of a woman who had been delivered in the Brownlow-street Hospital, and occurred a few days after her confinement.” Some verv curious and interesting statistical accounts of the ages of the patients then follow. Of 623 pregnant women, whose ages could be ascertained, there were— Age. Number. Proportion. From 16 to 20 • • 7 1 in 89 20 to 30 .. 325 1 in l-A 30 to 40 • • 244 1 m ill 40 to 50 • • 46 1 in 134 At 52 1 1 in 623 Average age, 30 Tot. 623 The collective age of these 623 w omen being 18,698 years. • During- the year 1816, some women were admitted into the Maternity as young as thirteen years of age, but none had applied who were older than forty. During the Revolution, one or two instances occurred of girls at eleven, and be- low that age, being received in a pregnant slate into that Hospital. The num- ber in 1816 stands thus : Age. Number. Proportion. From 13 to 18 .. 75 1 in Sb-f, 18 to 30 •• 1906 30 to 40 .. 653 1 in 4 Average age, 25 Tot.263:1 2 H no. 259.