New York, March 22, 1899.
To the Editor:
—Apropos of an item under this heading, in a recent Journal, my father, Benjamin Cutter, M.D., Woburn, Mass. (obit. March 9, 1864), told me that in the last century women died so frequently in childbirth in Massachusetts that the men arose in wrath and compelled the physicians to practice midwifery and replace the midwives who were so unskiful; also that "John Brooks, M.A., Yale, 1781, and Harv., 1787, M.D., Harv., 1810, LL.D., Harv., 1817, president of the Massachusetts Medical Society, governor of Massachusetts," a noted military surgeon and friend of Washington, first responded to the imperative call and used his influence in its behalf. Soon unnecessary deaths ceased to devastate the homes of the "Old Bay State" of their glories (I Cor. ii, 7) and of their Queens of Motherhood.