The course of education, before the end of which no pupil can receive the certificate of a fully qualified midwife, must certainly not be less than two years.
Is this merely an ideal? Is it an Utopia? Have we never seen it in practice? Could it not be put in practice in practical England?
Seen it in practice we have—save and except the sanitary practice, which is wofully deficient—on the continent of Europe.
And lady professors there have been in midwifery on the Continent quite equal to the most distinguished physician accoucheurs in this or in any other country; who took their place among these, among the Sir James Simpsons and the Sir Charles Lococks, as of them, and not outside of them, in all midwifery matters, scientific as well as practical.
The names of Madame Boivin and Madame Lachapelle, of Paris, are known to all Europe. And there are many other names of lady professors in midwifery and of midwives, not known in England at all, who take their uncontested places on the continent in practice, in consultation, in teaching, as a Sir James Simpson here. They teach in midwives’ colleges, and imperial and royal ladies are sometimes, and often wish to be always, attended by them.
Note.—A society has already existed for several years, the object of which, according to its programme, is ‘to provide educated women with proper facilities for learning the theory and practice of midwifery, and the accessory branches of medical science.’
The programme states most justly that, for want of these, for want of ‘proper means of study,’ of ‘any public examination,’ ‘any person may undertake the duties of a midwife.’
Let us look what the ‘proper means of study’ are which it provides.
They are—1. Attendance upon lectures during two winter sessions. 2. Attendance ‘during the intervening summer’ upon clinical practice at ‘a’ lying-in hospital or maternity charity, with personal attendance upon at least twenty-five deliveries!
[It is easy to make a rough calculation how many cases of abnormal parturition occur to how many normal. Is it likely that among ‘twenty-five deliveries’ there will be abnormal cases enough to practise the pupil-judgment, the pupil-hand?]