Until recently, the whole of the deliveries, which amounted to an average of about 500 a year, were under the charge of one paid officer and a pauper who, without any payment or extra diet, delivered nearly every case and worked both night and day.
There are several points in this procedure which are of great importance, as bearing on the general question of successful management of lying-in establishments:—
1. The building, although situated in a large commercial town, is on a high, isolated, and freely ventilated locality.
2. It is not connected with a general hospital or medical school, or with any of their risks.
3. There is a constant change of wards:—pregnant ward, delivery ward, lying-in ward, recovery ward, body of the house. There is, in short, as little risk as possible of the cumulative blood-poisoning process already referred to.
4. Frequent cleansing and lime-washing.
5. Passing women who have been delivered as speedily as possible out of the division altogether, either into the house or outside.
6. The deliveries being conducted by a woman specially attached to the delivery ward, and no part of whose duty it is to attend sick.
7. The immediate isolation or removal of all cases exhibiting feverish symptoms and their treatment out of the division.
8. The reduction of intercommunication between the lying-in and hospital divisions to the smallest possible degree on the part of medical officers and nurses.