Dr. Henry C. Coe, Professor of Gynecology at Bellevue Hospital, New York, and Chief Surgeon of Gynecology and Obstetrics at the General Memorial Hospital, New York, says: Midwives are responsible for the majority of cases sent to public hospitals. It is a sad commentary on the mediæval customs of obstetrics that such facts, known to all doctors, should be ignored by coroners. The remedy is plain,—to have educated midwives, as in Germany. Dr. J. Clarence Webster, of the Rush Medical College, Chicago, says: The midwives are, as a class, uneducated and untrained. They are responsible for the great majority of maternal deaths. Every gynecologist who works in a large charity hospital can give evidence of the morbidity among poor women resulting from infection where the attendant was a midwife. The splendid results obtained by the lying-in hospitals and dispensaries, where women are attended by skilled physicians and trained nurses, are chiefly due to a rigid technique, the essential feature of which is cleanliness. It is a disgrace to every city that the benefits of such institutions cannot be extended to all poor women. Any surgeon who would dare to operate under the conditions observed by midwives would be denounced not only by the medical profession, but also by the enlightened laity. Yet the latter are apparently indifferent to the work of the midwife, and allow her to carry on her dangerous career uncensured. The extension of the benefits of scientific obstetrics is chiefly due to the persistence and self-sacrifice of the medical profession, but the doctors are unable, unaided, to do what remains to be done. Dr. Francis Quinlin, President of the New York County Medical Association, says: All reputable physicians who have given the matter the slightest consideration are of one mind in regard to the menace to life in the ignorant work of the great majority of midwives. The New York County Medical Association has let slip no opportunity to throw the weight of its influence on the side of remedial measures. That little has been accomplished so far is due to the fact that the midwife, as she exists to-day, is a time-honored institution, difficult to uproot. Most midwives have apparently no conception of the scientific cleanliness which is rightly regarded by physicians as being of prime importance. The most ordinary antiseptic precautions are ignored, with the result that, every day, women who have been attended by midwives are brought to hospitals suffering from blood-poisoning. In their habits of carelessness the midwives also carry from one house to another the germs of infectious diseases. In the interest of a host of poor mothers and of children whose lives are valuable to the nation, I say that the practice of midwifery should come under a much closer scrutiny of the law than is now the case.