A retrospect : an address to the medical and surgical graduates of the University of Glasgow, on 27th July, 1893 / by John G. McKendrick.

  • McKendrick, John G. (John Gray), 1841-1926.
Date:
1893
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Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: A retrospect : an address to the medical and surgical graduates of the University of Glasgow, on 27th July, 1893 / by John G. McKendrick. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by The University of Glasgow Library. The original may be consulted at The University of Glasgow Library.

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    APPENDIX. Note A. Letter from Dr. Priestley, London, to Dr. M'Xendrick, dated 18th June, 1893. You ask me concerning the progress which has been made during the last thirty years in obstetric medicine and gynaecology. I can now look back for a longer period than thirty years, and I think the progress which has been made since I began practice has been quite equal to that in medicine or surgery—in some respects, indeed, it has outpaced them. In midwifery proper, the improvements in the construction of forceps and instruments used as an alternative for the old operation of craniotomy have steadily tended to the diminution of maternal mortality in child-birth, as is shown in the later bills of mortality. The same may be said in reference to the measures taken for obviating the serious consequences of lisemorrhages before, during, or after delivery. A better knowledge of the anatomical and pathological conditions producing these complications has led to improved methods of procedure in these, as well as other morbid states pertaining to the puerperal period. But it is in regard to the prevention of puerperal fever, as the result of a better knowledge of septic processes, that the most striking results are apparent in this department of medicine, If surgery has benefited in this respect as the results of the teaching of Pasteur and Lister, obstetric medicine has equally gained ground. It is scarcely too much to say that, since the introduction of aseptic and antiseptic treatment, puerperal fever has been practically abolished in lying-in hospitals. At the last International Congress of Hygiene I pointed out that whereas, according to the well known statistics of Le Fort, the mortality of all the maternity hospitals in England and abroad, before the introduction of the new system, was no less than 34-21 per 1,000 from puerperal fever, it is now reduced to less than 5 per 1,000. Taking the whole statistics available, the hgures showed that more than 3,000 maternal lives had been saved in the short period since the introduction of antiseptics from these