Licence: Public Domain Mark
Credit: On the necessity of accoucheurs / by Mogostokos. 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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![198 On the Necessity of Accoucheurs. The number admitted was 269— Natural and speedy labours 205 Natural, but slow, ditto S3 Complicated labours 27 Impossible 4 so that more than one in nine cases was attended with irre- gularity and danger. Of the women delivered ten died. 1 of apoplexy.* 1 of epilepsy.* ] of haemorrhage. 1 of metritis. 1 of rupture of the uterus. 2 of organic diseases. S in consequence of the Caesarean operation. Of the children, 228 were born alive, among which was one saved by the Caesarean operation. 41 were dead. This shews a dreadful mortality of women in child-bed, viz. 1 in 27! and a no less dreadful sacrifice of infant’s lives, viz. 1 in 6£! The other extract I have to bring forward is from a little work published in 1809, under the name of “ A Picture of Lisbon, taken on the Spot, &c. &c. by a Gentleman many years resident at Lisbon” ; and is as follows : “ Accoucheurs are hardly known in Portugal. They are proscribed by the manners and prejudices of the nation, and by the insinuations of the monks, more than by any real principle of modesty. Jealousy renders the husbands in- sensible both to the sufferings of their wives, for want of as- sistance, under the most trying circumstances of nature, and to the danger to which the life, as well of the mother as of the infant, is exposed, from the unskilfulness of the midwives. The disustious consequences that continually arise from the latter cause are such as loudly call for the inter [creme of the legislature, which, however, is hardly to he expected from a government like the Portuguese.” Upon the whole, I am inclined to believe that it will be as well for our females not to dismiss their present obstetric attendants till more complete proofs are. produced of the competency of mid wives to conduct the important process of child-birth; and be it'remembered that the female are much more liable than the male practitioners to commit er- rors through hastiness and impatience. July 29, 1816. * Might not these be cases of puerperal convulsions ? for](https://iiif.wellcomecollection.org/image/b22351838_0004.jp2/full/800%2C/0/default.jpg)
