As time went on, Mrs. Smith’s headaches became more severe. Carrying water and coal upstairs greatly aggravated the heart trouble she had had since Jimmie’s birth. Suddenly dizzy one day, she nearly fell from a chair on which she was standing to wash the windows. The next morning her feet were so swollen she could with difficulty get on her shoes. Her neighbour on the lower landing remarked, “Of course, you’ll have to be worse before you’re better.” And she herself knew no other way. But the ante-natal clinic did. The doctor wrote kidney trouble on her attendance card. That, of course, was the technical diagnosis. He might have said it another way had he written “overwork” and “overbearing.” It was a long time since Mrs. Smith had been strong. She had nursed two of the children with measles right up to the day that the seventh had arrived. Three months later, with the eighth expected, she was going out charring. Her husband was out of work. The 30 shillings maternity benefit that would be coming to her from the national insurance department on the birth of her baby, would have to be supplemented somehow in order to meet all the additional expenses of the occasion. Well, the eighth baby was a miscarriage instead. Then there was the ninth, and then there was Jimmie, in quick succession. And with the five others and trying to keep up with all that she was learning at the school for mothers should be done for children, why it was more than one pair of hands was equal to. She had now reached the verge of collapse. The clinic doctor was telling her gravely that she must have medical attendance at once. The business of a centre is to supply supervision, but for medical treatment the patient is referred to her own physician. Mrs. Smith didn’t have one. Half the babies of the kingdom are brought into the world by midwives. Mrs. Smith could not afford a doctor. Well, Parliament could. The bill, presented by the physician in whose care she was now placed, was paid half by the national government and half by the health department of this borough. It is an arrangement which is considered a good investment by the national treasury. Without this aid Mrs. Smith would have died in convulsions and a new baby might never have been born. Careful feeding and careful doctoring obviated both disasters and carried the case to a triumphant conclusion. The baby is here. On his first birthday anniversary he tipped the scales at 20 pounds.