mall Army Nursing Reserve, but this is quite
inadequate for purposes of defence, and great efforts have recently
been made to supplement it by voluntary organisations, such as the
British Red Cross Society.

XI

PRISON NURSING

This is, at the present time, carried out by the ordinary staff of
prison warders. There are all over England not more than two or three
trained nurses among them, and it is most desirable that properly
trained women should be in charge of prison infirmary wards, just as
much as in the infirmary wards of workhouses. Prisoners are just as
likely to suffer from disease as other people, and they surely do not
forfeit all claim to expert care, simply because they have, perhaps
in a moment of weakness, yielded to temptation. To one form of illness
needing specially expert nursing, they are peculiarly liable--mental
disease. It is almost impossible to gauge the amount of good which
might be done both for the individual and for society by providing
trained nurses to attend to these unfortunate people.

XII

MIDWIFERY AS A PROFESSION FOR WOMEN (OTHER THAN DOCTORS)

This is not a paper to discuss the suitability of women for midwifery.
All through the ages it has been done by women, until early in the
nineteenth century in England and its colonies, it gradually became
customary for men-doctors to attend such cases; apart from this, the
work of midwifery has never been in the hands of men, except when
abnormal cases have required the assistance of a doctor with knowledge
of anatomy and skilled in instrumental delivery. Even before
the passing of the Midwives Act in 1902, statistics proved that
three-quarters of all confinements in this country were attended by
women.

Continental countries have been alive to the need for training the
women who did this work. For instance, in the great General Hospital
in Vienna with its 3,000 beds, 550 beds were kept apart for maternity
wards, and of these, 200 were reserved for the State training of
midwives--a course of _one_ year's duration being obligatory, with
_daily_ lectures on every detail in midwifery from the Professor of
Obstetrics. The present writer attended these lectures daily for six
months in 1885, and was made to feel the importance in teaching of
"hammering" at essentials and of questioning, so that the lecturer
might discover whether he were talking above the head of the least
clever of the audience.

England's population in