BUILDING THE NATION THROUGH WOMEN'S HEALTH: MODERN ...

Buddhist” contributed $1,000 to the Beiping Department of Police toward the training of these
old-style midwives.
These midwives were trained to go into their home communities and publicize the
benefits of aseptic births in order to lower maternal and infant mortality rates. According to a
1929 monthly report, the midwives were supposed to “explain to their patients the benefit of
their training to prevent puerperal fever and tetanus neo-natorum and the required supervision [of
labor and birth]. …They are obliged to urge every family to adopt and to accept the ‘aseptic’
method.” A supervisor was assigned to each student to “check technique and the quality of work
by close supervision of the strict regulation [sic],” and the graduates were required to submit two
reports for each birth: one within 24 hours and the second within two weeks after delivery. 358
Furthermore, each midwife was instructed to call her supervisor for their first five delivery cases.
The supervisor made sure that the newly trained midwives carried out all they had learned in
their two-month course.
In February 1929 a modern trained midwife, Miss Song, had 17 of these old-style
midwives under her supervision. In one month there should have been 85 deliveries among the
17, but Miss Song was called only twice in one 10-day period, meaning that she supervised only
7 percent of the births. The reasons given for this lack of compliance were that the work was
new to everyone and so no one was certain how to proceed with calling the supervisor.
Furthermore, Miss Song was employed on a part-time basis though she was expected to be on
call full time. Finally, there were unregistered midwives who opposed this work. The latter
reason stems from the fact that often several midwives were present at any given delivery.
Perhaps the unregistered and untrained midwives dissuaded the newly trained ones from calling
358 Yang, "Report of the Training and Supervision for Midwives, 1929."
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