Obstetrics for nurses / by Joseph B. De Lee.

  • Joseph DeLee
Date:
1933
Catalogue details

Licence: In copyright

Credit: Obstetrics for nurses / by Joseph B. De Lee. Source: Wellcome Collection.

    21/708 page 17
    OBSTETRICS FOR NURSES INTRODUCTION Statistics show that of every 200 women who become pregnant, at least 1 dies. Seven per cent of the deaths of women between the ages of twenty and forty years are due to puerperal infection. Conservatively estimated, 23,000 women die every year in the United States from the immediate and remote effects of childbirth. Tuberculosis is first, childbirth is second in the number of deaths in women from fifteen to forty years of age! One hundred thousand babies die every year in the United States during delivery, and another hundred thousand die in the first four weeks thereafter. This is three times as many men’s lives as we lost in the War, and these mothers’ and babies’ deaths were from causes largely due to the process of child¬ birth itself, and largely preventable—childbed fever and convulsions and birth injuries and infections. Thousands of women enter our hospitals each year for the repair of injuries acquired during delivery, and seeking relief from the diseases caused by child-bearing. Nearly one-third of the blind people in this world have lost the light of day because of the ignorance or the care¬ lessness of the attendants at the time of birth. What are the causes of these evils? The standard of obstetric practice is low. The people are allowed to believe that labor is a natural process and requires no special care. Therefore men with the best minds, with the greatest skill, find their endeavors better rewarded in other fields of medical practice. 2
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