Unlimited hot and cold water supply, day and night, should be laid on all over the buildings.
All drains and sewers must be kept outside the walls of the buildings, and great care should be bestowed on trapping and ventilating them, to prevent foul air passing into the institution.
The washing in a lying-in institution is, it need not be said, very large, and should be conducted quite at a distance. Sink-baths, for immediately putting in water soiled linen, are necessary.
12. Medical Officer’s Room and Waiting-room.
No dispensary, especially no dispenser, is needed in a lying-in institution.
A medical officer’s room is necessary. The medical officer is not resident. He makes his morning and evening visit, and is called in by the head midwife for any difficult case. He gives instruction, scientific and practical, to the pupil midwives. [These lectures are given in the pupil midwives’ mess-room.]
In the medical officer’s room should be kept the instruments, to which a fully qualified head midwife also has a key. The medical officer keeps the notes of cases, &c., and of instruction to the pupil midwives in this room.
The few, very few, drugs needed in a good lying-in institution are kept here, or in the head midwife’s sitting-room.
A waiting-room is necessary.
There must be a room where the head midwife can examine a woman, to know if labour is imminent.