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

In October 1933, a Second Health Demonstration Station was established by the
Department of Hygiene and Public Health of the Beiping National Medical College, in
cooperation with the Municipal Health Department. The FNMS organized and supervised the
Station’s maternal and child health clinic with one part-time physician and one full-time midwife
assigned to this work. Between 1933 and 1934, total attendance at the second clinic was 779,
with 53 deliveries, two of which were referred to hospital.
MATERNAL AND CHILD HEALTH OUTREACH
The FNMS created an innovative approach to maternal and child health by using various
methods to spread the reach of modern midwifery and maternal and child health into local
communities and nationwide. As the school grew and developed, it offered new types of
activities and training designed to promote and publicize maternal and child health locally,
including practicums, lecture series, and follow-up visits. A crucial part of the FNMS, as in the
PUMC School of Nursing, was the students’ required practicum in the Health Demonstration
Station or the Beiping Child Health Institute. (Old-style midwives being retrained were exempt
from this requirement.) In addition, the school also had a 45-bed teaching maternity hospital
with ante- and postpartum clinic facilities, which expanded to 80 beds in later years. The FNMS
hospital delivery service included normal confinements with and without antenatal care, morbid
pregnancy conditions such as toxemia, threatened abortion (miscarriage), hemorrhage, early
rupture of membranes, hemorrhage, febrile conditions, and contracted pelvis. The home service
included normal confinements, ante- and postpartum and child welfare home visits to patients
who failed make their clinic appointments, investigative visits to determine family’s financial
condition and cleanliness of the home to determine whether home delivery was possible, and
153