Maxims of Public Health Author:Orlando Williams Wight General Books publication date: 2009 Original publication date: 1884 Original Publisher: D. Appleton and company Subjects: Public health History / General Medical / Health Care Delivery Medical / Public Health Notes: This is a black and white OCR reprint of the original. It has no illustrations and there may be typos or missing text... more ». When you buy the General Books edition of this book you get free trial access to Million-Books.com where you can select from more than a million books for free. Excerpt: Obedience must be spontaneous on the part of the larger number, or on those whose influence preponderates in society; as regards the rest, compulsion must be brought to bear." "Compulsion must be brought to bear " to secure respect for health and life, as well as for property and good name. VII. Sarcastic old Kabelais makes his hero find a book in the library of a convent, entitled "The Meditations of a Holy Nun in the Perils of Childbirth." A book, entitled " The Meditations of a Quack Midwife in the Act of Killing new-born Babies," might be profitably written, if any one could suppose that an ignorant, presumptuous creature, venturing to approach the lying-in woman, at the sacred hour of maternity, with unskilled and often unclean hands, is mentally or morally capable of meditating at all. Educated midwives are a boon to the poor. Women who offer their services without knowledge -- knowledge ascertained and certified to by a properly appointed public authority -- should be treated as criminals. The number of " still-births " in all our mortuary records is fearful. Quack midwifery is among the obvious causes, but not the sole cause. Liberty to slaughter innocents seems to be quite as dear to the feminine as to the masculine heart. These Lucretia Borgias of the bed-side will in due time have a proper place in the history of peoples. VIII Whoever tries to live entirely by rule may end by not living at all. It would be a fatal mistake, however, to take encour...« less