[16] (p. 355) There are two great causes of sickness in our lying-in wards. First, mental distress during pregnancy, caused by poverty or neglect; second, the exposure and fatigue which many endure before coming to us.
One young girl, late last fall, had been sleeping for a week in outhouses. Another came in the cold winter weather, after wandering in a bewildered condition in the streets with wet skirts and no stockings, searching for some place of shelter in her distress. Another when she entered was very sick with acute pleurisy and pneumonia, so that even before her delivery her life was threatened. Several cases of intermittent fever and one of typhus fever were admitted under such circumstances that we could not avoid taking them without being guilty of inhumanity. Two women in a comatose condition from puerperal convulsions were also taken in. One of these last was restored to health, while the other never recovered consciousness.
We have taken in several babies who were so poisoned with patented nostrums that only the most vigorous treatment with antidotes could rouse them, and weeks of the most assiduous nursing were necessary to restore their enfeebled vitality.
Some of you saw in one of the wards the wretched little creature who was brought by its mother to us in a comatose state, with the skin drawn loosely over its bones and its half-closed glassy eyes sunk deeply in their sockets. This child had been boarded out by its mother while she worked at service, and it had been gradually declining until at the age of three and one-half months, it weighed but seven and one-half pounds.
This was an extreme case, but frequently a practiced eye will detect the same process going on. Often when I am called to a sick child, I recognize in the ashy hue, sunken eyes and other well-known symptoms, the work of some “soothing syrup” or other equally pernicious drug. Pitiful indeed is the fate of babies deprived of their natural guardians and subjected to the influence of these infamous nostrums.
Can we not find some means to secure to infants a mother’s care and love for at least the first year of their lives, by furnishing these mothers with some honest means of support, and thus saving both mothers and children? I leave this important question for you to consider, for even if it is not strictly part of our work, it is a sequel to one department of our Hospital.
A young woman, who in her childhood lost her mother and whose stepmother not only kept a house of ill-fame but sent this daughter to another, has now a beautiful baby to which she is so strongly attached that, in spite of the evil influences of all her past life, she is willing to do even the hardest work for the sake of keeping her baby with her. Yet, only a few evenings ago she came, with her blue-eyed baby sweetly smiling in the soft wrappings provided by its fond mother, and said that she must give it up. “Nobody,” she said, “would take her with her baby,” and I saw the hard look in her eyes and the bitter smile that made me tremble for her future, though I am confident that she had the will and the strength to earn her living honestly.
Last winter we were called to attend a woman in a difficult and complicated labor. She lived in a dark basement with floor wet and broken, the scanty bedcovering eked out by her husband’s old coat (which he himself needed) and the small pile of coal on the floor being the only comforts visible except the stove. Cold, faint and hungry, this woman had suffered for hours. When she was safely delivered, public charity could not make her comfortable—it was private benevolence that gave her blankets, sheets, clothing and care.
Another case of recent occurrence shows how insufficient is the law to take care of the sick. A woman in one of the worst localities in the city who was beaten by her drunken husband and turned out of doors, was seized with premature labor in the streets and found her way into the house of a neighbor. This neighbor, Mrs. M., who was nearly blind, supported by her daily earnings herself and an interesting little boy whom she had taken from the city crier’s to nurse and whom she had kept with her rather than send him to Tewksbury.
Mrs. M. allowed the woman to stay, and on the third day I was sent for and found her in an almost dying condition. It was late Saturday evening, and there was neither food nor fuel in the house. The woman was too ill to be removed, no aid could be obtained from the city before Monday, and then the legal allowance would be only two dollars in groceries and one dollar in money. Clothing, a bed and a nurse were absolutely needed. These were provided by private charity and the woman recovered, though it was said that three different physicians who were called in by the neighbors had declined to attend her as they considered it useless under such adverse circumstances to attempt to save her.