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

hospital cannot do a single thing but train our nurses to go out and do good midwifery we are
doing a splendid piece of constructive work.” 511
The number of patients that modern midwives saw was very small. Especially in rural
areas, women were reluctant to rely on young, unmarried (and therefore childless) women to
attend their births. But the midwives did not give up. They made home visits to get acquainted
with the patients, gave them checkups, and encouraged pregnant women to be attended by
midwives at their births. According to one account from the Wuxing County Rural Clinic and
Dispensary (Wuxing xianli xiangcun zhenliaosuo吴兴县立乡村诊疗所), the midwives on home
visits gradually developed relationships with families by visiting them several times to gain their
trust. They “talked slowly to convince” these women of the importance of prenatal care and
aseptic birth. 512 This approach must have worked. In Nanjing, the total number of births
attended for free by trained midwives in 1930 was 22, and by 1934 that number had grown to
2,122. The number of prenatal checkups in 1930 was 70, and by 1934 it was 11,719. Postnatal
checkups numbered 16 in 1930, and rose to 972 in 1934. 513
We have thus far focused our attention on the midwives themselves and discussed their
legislation, regulation, and training programs. The other primary actors in these tranformations
were the mothers and pregnant women themselves. During the Nationalist period we see new
attention aimed at the mothers of the new nation. Literature on modern births and modern
midwives, especially on taijiao (胎教), or fetal education, grew in popularity during this period.
While Yang was working to spread modern obstetrical methods in order to lower the maternal
and infant mortality rates nationwide, and midwifery was emerging as a profession, New Culture
511 Shemo, ""An Army of Women,'" 404.
512 Neizhengbu, Neizheng Nianjian, G234.
513 Ibid., G27. It is probable that the number of prenatal visits outweighs the number of actual women seen, for most
were seen more than once.
205