The Sisters do not help the midwife, as a rule. Only the Superior, on an emergency, and one for scrubbing floors periodically, enter the midwifery wards (i.e. the delivery and lying-in wards).
In 1869 Aldershot had no fatal case among the lying-in women.
[The ‘infection wards’ are nursed by ordinary nurses, and in cases of children by the parents.]
It will be seen, therefore, that at Aldershot the midwife has nothing to do with the general cases, and the matron is not now the midwife. Both there and at Woolwich the lying-in nursing is quite separate from the general nursing.
The medical officer remarks, as to the two deaths in 1869 at Woolwich: ‘Two cases of puerperal peritonitis after bad labours, requiring instrumental and other assistance, died, but the disease did not extend. My opinion is that the coldness of the wards, though objectionable, has a great deal to do with the comparative immunity hitherto enjoyed as regards the germination and extension of contagious diseases.’
It need scarcely be said that these new hospitals are models of cleanliness.
In the Colchester Hut the patient is received into a separate compartment, of which there are four, where she is delivered and remains until discharged to quarters.
It is very rarely indeed, if ever, that all the four compartments are occupied simultaneously. The average stay is ten days; the average number of deliveries a year under 50.
This hut does not form part of a hospital. It is a separate establishment, solely for lying-in women, as such accommodation should always be.
Note.—There is another reason, though it may be termed a fanciful one, for altogether disconnecting lying-in institutions with general hospitals, and even with the name and idea of hospital. It is this: there must be a certain death-rate in a general hospital, receiving as it does fatal diseases and fatal accidents, as long as men and women have fatal diseases and fatal accidents.