THE TEACHING OF OBSTETRICS

Apparently few conceptions of medical practice have changed as little during the passing of the years as have those devoted to the care of the mother in childbirth. The teaching of this science at first entirely by lectures changed to the period of the use of manikins, then to the period when the student observed the work of his teacher, later to the period of one or two cases attended by the student, and now to the time when attendance on eighteen to twenty cases is required of every prospective physician. It is generally recognized, moreover, that scientific obstetrics requires much more than is today offered to the average student of medicine.

In his presidential address before the American Association of Obstetricians, Gynecologists and Abdominal Surgeons, Dr. Palmer Findley¹ pointed out that the outpatient service is a poor substitute for the dispensary and the hospital, and that there is