Row upon row of girl children--little tots all, four, five, six, even seven years old, sitting cross-legged on the floor, facing the brazen goddess. Before each one, laid straight and tidy, certain treasures--a flower, a bead or two, a piece of fruit--precious things brought from their homes as sacrificial offerings. For this is a sort of day-school of piety. These babies are learning texts--"mantrims" to use in worship--learning the rites that belong to the various ceremonies incumbent upon Hindu women. And that is all they are learning; that is all they need to know. Now in unison they pray.
"What are they praying for?" one asks the teacher, a grave-faced Hindu lady.
"What should a woman-child pray for? A husband, if she is not married; or, if she is, then for a better husband at her next re-birth."
Women pray first as to husbands; then, to bear sons. Men must have sons to serve their souls.
Already we have seen some evidence of the general attitude of the Hindu toward this, the greatest of all his concerns, in its prenatal aspect. But another cardinal point that, in any practical survey of Indian competency, can be neither contested nor suppressed, is the manner in which the Hindu of all classes permits his much-coveted son to be ushered into the light of day.
We have spoken of women's hospitals in various parts of India. These are doing excellent work, mostly gynecological. But they are few, relatively to the work to be done, nor could the vast majority of Indian women, in their present state of development, be induced to use a hospital, were it at their very door.
What the typical Indian woman wants in her hour of trial is the thing to which she is historically used--the midwife--the dhai. And the dhai is a creature that must indeed be seen to be credited.
According to the Hindu code, a woman in childbirth and in convalescence therefrom is ceremonially unclean, contaminating all that she touches. Therefore only those become dhais who are themselves of the unclean, "untouchable" class, the class whose filthy habits will be adduced by the orthodox Hindu as his good and sufficient reason for barring them from contact with himself. Again according to the Hindu code, a woman in childbirth, like the new-born child itself, is peculiarly susceptible to the "evil eye." Therefore no woman whose child has died, no one who has had an abortion, may, in many parts of India, serve as dhai, because of the malice or jealousy that may secretly inspire her. Neither may any widow so serve, being herself a thing of evil omen. Not all of these disqualifications obtain everywhere. But each holds in large sections.
Further, no sort of training is held necessary for the Work. As a calling, it descends in families. At the death of a dhai, her daughter or daughter-in-law may adopt it, beginning at once to practice even though she has never seen a confinement in all her life.[1] But other women, outside the line of descent, may also take on the work and, if they are properly beyond the lines of the taboos, will find ready employment without any sort of preparation and for the mere asking.
[1. Cf. Edris Griffin, Health Visitor, Delhi, in National Health, Oct, 1925, p. 125.]
Therefore, in total, you have the half-blind, the aged, the crippled, the palsied and the diseased, drawn from the dirtiest poor, as sole ministrants to the women of India in the most delicate, the most dangerous and the most important hour of their existence.
The expectant mother makes no preparations for the baby's coming--such as the getting ready of little garments. This would be taking dangerously for granted the favor of the gods. But she may and does toss into a shed or into a small dark chamber whatever soiled and disreputable rags, incapable of further use, fall from the hands of the household during the year.
And it is into this evil-smelling rubbish-hole that the young wife creeps when her hour is come upon her. "Unclean" she is, in her pain--unclean whatever she touches, and fit thereafter only to be destroyed. In the name of thrift, therefore, give her about her only the unclean and the worthless, whether human or inanimate. If there be a broken-legged, ragged string-cot, let her have that to lie upon; it can be saved in that same black chamber for the next to need it. Otherwise, make her a little support of cow-dung or of stones, on the bare earthen floor. And let no one waste effort in sweeping or dusting or washing the place till this occasion be over.[2]
[2. National Health, 1925, p. 70. See also Maggie Ghose in Victoria Memorial Scholarship Fund Report, Calcutta, 1918, p. 153.]
When the pains begin, send for the dhai. If the dhai, when the call reaches her, chances to be wearing decent clothes, she will stop, whatever the haste, to change into the rags she keeps for the purpose, infected and re-infected from the succession of diseased cases that have come into her practice. And so, at her dirtiest, a bearer of multiple contagions, she shuts herself in with her victim.
If there be an air-hole in the room, she stops it up with straw and refuse; fresh air is bad in confinements--it gives fever. If there be rags sufficient to make curtains, she cobbles them together, strings them across a corner and puts the patient within, against the wall, still farther to keep away the air. Then, to make darkness darker, she lights the tiniest glim--a bit of cord in a bit of oil, or a little kerosene lamp without a chimney, smoking villainously. Next, she makes a small charcoal fire in a pan beneath the bed or close by the patient's side, whence it joins its poisonous breath to the serried stenches.
The first dhai that I saw in action tossed upon this coal-pot, as I entered the room, a handful of some special vile-smelling stuff to ward off the evil eye--my evil eye. The smoke of it rose thick--also a tongue of flame. By that light one saw her Witch-of-Endor face through its vermin-infested elf-locks, her hanging rags, her dirty claws, as she peered with festered and almost sightless eyes out over the stink-cloud she had raised. But it was not she who ran to quench the flame that caught in the bed and went writhing up the body of her unconscious patient. She was too blind--too dull of sense to see or to feel it.
If the delivery is at all delayed, the dhai is expected to explore for the reason of the delay. She thrusts her long-unwashed hand, loaded with dirty rings and bracelets and encrusted with untold living contaminations, into the patient's body, pulling and twisting at what she finds there.[3] If the delivery is long delayed and difficult, a second or a third dhai may be called in, if the husband of the patient will sanction the expense, and the child may be dragged forth in detached sections--a leg or an arm torn off at a time.[4]
[3. V.M.S.F. Report, "Improvement of the Conditions of Child-Birth in India," pp. 70 et seq.]
[4. Dr. Marion A. Wylie., M.A., M.B., Ch. B., Ibid., p. 85, and Ibid., Appendix V, p. 69.]
Again to quote from a medical woman:[5]
[5. Ibid., p. 71.]
One often sees in cases of contracted pelvis due to osteo-malacia, if there seems no chance of the head passing down [that the dhai attempts to draw on the limbs, and, if possible, breaks them off. She prefers to extract the child by main force, and the patient in such cases is badly torn, often into her bladder, with the resulting large vesico-vaginal fistulae so common in Indian women, and which cause them so much misery.
Such labor may last three, four, five, even six days. During all this period the woman is given no nourishment whatever--such is the code--and the dhai resorts to all her traditions. She kneads the patient with her fists; stands her against the wall and butts her with her head; props her upright on the bare ground, seizes her hands and shoves against her thighs with gruesome bare feet,[6] until, so the doctors state, the patient's flesh is often torn to ribbons by the dhai's long, ragged toe-nails. Or, she lays the woman flat and walks up and down her body, like one treading grapes. Also, she makes balls of strange substances, such as hollyhock roots, or dirty string, or rags full of quince-seeds; or earth, or earth mixed with cloves, butter and marigold flowers; or nuts, or spices--any irritant--and thrusts them into the uterus, to hasten the event. In some parts of the country, goats' hair, scorpions' stings, monkey-skulls, and snake-skins are considered valuable applications.[7]
[6. V.M.S.F. Report, p. 99, Dr. K. O. Vaughan.]
[7. Ibid., pp. 151-2, Mrs. Chowdhri, sub-assistant surgeon.]
These insertions and the wounds they occasion commonly result in partial or complete permanent closing of the passage.
If the afterbirth be over five minutes in appearing, again the filthy, ringed and bracelet-loaded hand and wrist are thrust in, and the placenta is ripped loose and dragged away.[8]
[8. V.M.S.F. Report, p. 86, Dr. M. A. Wylie.]
No clean clothes are provided for use in the confinement, and no hot water. Fresh cow-dung or goats' droppings, or hot ashes, however, often serve as heating agents when the patient's body begins to turn cold.[9]
[9. Ibid., p. 152, Miss Vidyabai M. Ram.]
In Benares, sacred among cities, citadel of orthodox Hinduism, the sweepers, all of whom are "Untouchables," are divided into seven grades. From the first come the dhais; from the last and lowest come the "cord-cutters." To cut the umbilical cord is considered a task so degrading that in the Holy City even a sweep will not undertake it, unless she be at the bottom of her kind. Therefore the unspeakable dhai brings with her a still more unspeakable servant to wreak her quality upon the mother and the child in birth.
Sometimes it is a split bamboo that they use; sometimes a bit of an old tin can, or a rusty nail, or a potsherd or a fragment of broken glass. Sometimes, having no tool of their own and having found nothing sharp-edged lying about, they go out to the neighbors to borrow. I shall not soon forget the cry: "Hi, there, inside! Bring me back that knife! I hadn't finished paring my vegetables for dinner."
The end of the cut cord, at best, is left undressed, to take care of itself. In more careful and less happy cases, it is treated with a handful of earth, or with charcoal, or with several other substances, including cow-dung. Needless to add, a heavy per cent, of such children as survive the strain of birth, die of lock-jaw[10] or of erysipelas.
[10. "Ordinarily half the children born in Bengal die before reaching the age of eight years, and only one-quarter of the population reaches the age of forty years...As to the causes influencing infant mortality, 50 per cent, of the deaths are due to debility at birth and 11.4 per cent, to tetanus." 54th Annual Report of the Director of Public Health of Bengal, pp. 8-10.]
As the child is taken from the mother, it is commonly laid upon the bare floor, uncovered and unattended, until the dhai is ready to take it up. If it be a girl child, many simple rules have been handed down through the ages for discontinuing the unwelcome life then and there.
In the matter of feeding, practice varies. In the Central Provinces, the first feedings are likely to be of crude sugar mixed with the child's own urine.[11] In Delhi, it may get sugar and spices, or wine, or honey, Or, it may be fed for the first three days on something called gutli, a combination of spices in which have been stewed old rust-encrusted lucky coins and charms written out on scraps of paper. These things, differing somewhat in different regions, castes and communities, differ more in detail than in the quality of intelligence displayed.
[11. V.M.S.F. Report, p. 86, Dr. M. A. Wylie.]
As to the mother, she, as has already been said, is usually kept without any food or drink for from four to seven days from the outset of her confinement; or, if she be fed, she is given only a few dry nuts and dates. The purpose here seems sometimes to be one of thrift--to save the family utensils from pollution. But in any case it enjoys the prestige of an ancient tenet to which the economical spirit of the household lends a spontaneous support.[12]
[12. Edris Griffin, in National Health, Oct., 1925, p. 124.]
In some regions or communities the baby is not put to the breast till after the third day[13]--a custom productive of dire results. But in others the mother is expected to feed not only the newly born, but her elder children as well, if she have them. A child three years old will not seldom be sent in to be fed at the mother's breast during the throes of a difficult labor. "It cried--it was hungry. It wouldn't have other food," the women outside will explain.
[13. V.M.S.F. Report, p. 86.]
As a result, first, of their feeble and diseased ancestry; second, of their poor diet; and, third, of their own infant marriage and premature sexual use and infection, a heavy percentage of the women of India are either too small-boned or too internally misshapen and diseased to give normal birth to a child, but require surgical aid. It may safely be said that all these cases die by slow torture, unless they receive the care of a British or American woman doctor, or of an Indian woman, British-trained.[14] Such care, even though it be at hand, is often denied the sufferer, either by the husband or by the elder women of the family, in their devotion to the ancient cults.
[14. For the male medical student in India, instruction in gynecology and midwifery is extremely difficult to get, for the reason that Indian women can rarely be persuaded to come to hospitals open to medical men. With the exception of certain extremely limited opportunities, therefore, the Indian student must get his gynecology from books. Even though he learns it abroad, he has little or no opportunity to practice it. Sometimes, it is true, the western-diplomaed Indian doctor will conduct a labor case by sitting on the far side of a heavy curtain calling out advice based on the statements shouted across by the dhai who is handling the patient. But this scarcely constitutes "practice" as the word is generally meant.]
Or, even in cases where a delivery is normal, the results, from an Indian point of view, are often more tragic than death. An able woman surgeon, Dr. K. O. Vaughan, of the Zenana Hospital at Srinagar, thus expresses it:[15]
[15. VMS.F. Report, pp. 98-9.]
Many women who are childless and permanently disabled are so from the maltreatment received during parturition; many men are without male issue because the child has been killed by ignorance when born, or their wives so mangled by the midwives they are incapable of further childbearing...
I [illustrate] my remarks with a few cases typical of the sort of thing every medical woman practising in this country encounters.
A summons comes, and we are told a woman is in labour. On arrival at the house we are taken into a small, dark and dirty room, often with no window. If there is one it is stopped up. Puerperal fever is supposed to be caused by fresh air. The remaining air is vitiated by the presence of a charcoal fire burning in a pan, and on a charpoy [cot] or on the floor is the woman. With her are one or two dirty old women, their clothes filthy, their hands begrimed with dirt, their heads alive with vermin. They explain that they are midwives, that the patient has been in labour three days, and they cannot get the child out. They are rubbing their hands on the floor previous to making another effort. On inspection we find the vulva swollen and torn. They tell us, yes, it is a bad case and they have had to use both feet and hands in their effort to deliver her...Chloroform is given and the child extracted with forceps. We are sure to find hollyhock roots which have been pushed inside the mother, sometimes string and a dirty rag containing quince-seeds in the uterus itself...
Do not think it is the poor only who suffer like this. I can show you the homes of many Indian men with University degrees whose wives are confined on filthy rags and attended by these Bazaar dhais because it is the custom, and the course for the B.A. degree does not include a little common sense.
Doctor Vaughan then proceeds to quote further illustrations from her own practice, of which the following is a specimen:[16]
[16. V.M.S.F. Report, pp. 99-100.]
A wealthy Hindu, a graduate of an Indian University and a lecturer himself, a man who is highly educated, calls us to his house, as his wife has been delivered of a child and has fever...We find that [the dhai] had no disinfectants as they would have cost her about Rs. 3 [one dollar, American], and the fee she will get on the case is only Rs. I and a few dirty clothes. The patient is lying on a heap of cast-off and dirty clothes, an old waistcoat, an English railway rug, a piece of water-proof packing from a parcel, half a stained and dirty shirt of her husband's. There are no sheets or clean rags of any kind. As her husband tells me: "We shall give her clean things on the fifth day, but not now; that is ouï custom."
That woman, in spite of all we could do, died of septicaemia contracted either from the dirty clothing which is saved from one confinement in the family to another [unwashed], or from the dhai, who did her best in the absence of either hot water, soap, nail-brush or disinfectants.
Evidence is in hand of educated, traveled and wellborn Indians, themselves holders of European university degrees, who permit their wives to undergo this same inheritance of darkness. The case may be cited of an Indian medical man, holding an English University's Ph.D. and M.D. degrees, considered to be exceptionally able and brilliant and now actually in charge of a government center for the training of dhais in modern midwifery. His own young wife being recently confined, he yielded to the pressure of the elder women of his family and called in an old-school dhai, dirty and ignorant as the rest, to attend her. The wife died of puerperal fever; the child died in the birth. "When we have the spectacle of even educated Indians with English degrees allowing their wives and children to be killed off like flies by ignorant midwives," says Doctor Vaughan again, "we can faintly imagine the sufferings of their humbler sisters."
But the question of station or of worldly goods has small part in the matter. To this the admirable sisterhood of English and American women doctors unites to testify.
Dr. Marion A\Wylie's words are:[17]
[17. Ibid., p. 86.]
These conditions are by no means confined to the poorest or most ignorant classes. I have attended the families of Rajahs, where many of these practices were carried out, and met with strenuous opposition when I introduced ventilation and aseptic measures.
Sweeper-girl or Brahman, outcaste or queen, there ia essentially little to choose between their lots, in that fierce moment for which alone they were born. An. Indian Christian lady of distinguished position and attainment, whose character has opened to her many doors that remain to others fast closed, gives the following story of her visit of mercy to a child-princess.
The little thing, wife of a ruling prince and just past her tenth year, was already in labor when her visitor entered the room. The dhais were busy over her, but the case was obviously serious, and priestly assistance had been called. Outside the door sat its exponent--an old man, reading aloud from the scriptures and from time to time chanting words of direction deciphered from his book.
"Hark, within, there!" he suddenly shouted. "Now it is time to make a fire upon this woman's body. Make and light a fire upon her body, quick!"
Instantly the dhais set about to obey.
"And what will the fire do to our little princess?" quietly asked the visitor, too practiced to express alarm.
"Oh," replied the women, listlessly, "if it be her fate to live, she will live, and there will, of course, be a great scar branded upon her. Or, if it be her fate to die, then she will die"--and on they went with their fire-building.
Out to the ministrant squatting at the door flew the quick-witted visitor. "Holy One," she asked, "are you not afraid of the divine jealousies? You are about to make the Fire-sacrifice--but this is a queen, not a common mortal. Will not Mother Ganges see and be jealous that no honor is paid to her?"
The old man looked up, perplexed. "It is true," he said, "it is true the gods are ever jealous and easily provoked to anger--but the Book here surely says--" And his troubled eyes turned to the ancient writ outspread upon his knees.
"Have you Ganges water here in the house?" interrupted the other.
"Surely. Dare the house live without it!" answered the old one.
"Then here is what I am given to say: Let water of Holy Ganges be put upon bright fire and made thrice hot. Let it then be poured into a marvel-sack that the gods, by my hand, shall provide. And let that sack be laid upon the Maharani's body. So in a united offering--fire and water together--shall the gods be propitiated and their wrath escaped,"
"This is wisdom. So be it!" cried the old man. Then quick ran the visitor to fetch her Bond Street hot-water bag.
Superstition, among the Indian peoples, knows few boundary lines of condition or class. Women in general are prone to believe that disease is an evidence of the approach of a god. Medicine and surgery, driving that god away, offend him, and it is ill business to offend the Great Ones; better, therefore, charms and propitiations, with an eye to the long run.
And besides the gods, there are the demons and evil spirits, already as many as the sands of the sea, to whose number more must not be added.
Among the worst of demons are the spirits of women who died in childbirth before the child was born. These walk with their feet turned backward, haunting lonely roads and the family hearth, and are malicious beyond the rest.
Therefore, when a woman is seen to be about to breathe her last, her child yet undelivered--she may have lain for days in labor for a birth against which her starveling bones are locked--the dhai, as in duty bound, sets to work upon precautions for the protection of the family.
First she brings pepper and rubs it into the dying eyes, that the soul may be blinded and unable to find its way out. Then she takes two long iron nails, and, stretching out her victim's unresisting arms--for the poor creature knows and accepts her fate--drives a spike straight through each palm fast into the floor. This is done to pinion the soul to the ground, to delay its passing or that it may not rise and wander, vexing the living. And so the woman dies, piteously calling to the gods for pardon for those black sins of a former life for which she now is suffering.
This statement, horrible as it is, rests upon the testimony of many and unimpeachable medical witnesses in widely separated parts of India. All the main statements in this chapter rest upon such testimony and upon my own observation.
It would be unjust to assume, however, that the dhai, for all her monstrous deeds, is a blameworthy creature. Every move that she makes is a part of the ancient and accepted ritual of her calling. Did she omit or change any part of it, nothing would be gained; simply the elder women of the households she serves would revile her for incapacity and call in another more faithful to the creed.
Her services include attendance at the time of confinement and for ten days, more or less, thereafter, the approximate interval during which no member of the family will approach the patient because of her un-cleanness. During this time the dhai does all that is done for the sick woman and the infant. At its end she is expected to clean the defiled room and coat with cow-dung its floor and walls.
She receives her pay in accordance with the sex of the child that was born. These sums vary. A rich man may give her for the entire period of service as much as Rs. 15 (about $5.00) if the child be a son. From the well-to-do the more usual fee is about R. I ($.33) for a son and eight annas ($.16) for a daughter. The poor pay the dhai for her fortnight's work the equivalent of four or five cents for a son and two to three cents for a daughter. Herself the poorest of the poor, she has no means of her own wherewith to buy as much as a cake of soap or a bit of clean cotton. None are anywhere provided for her. And so, the slaughter goes on.[18]
[18. VMS.F. Report, p. 89.]
Various funds subscribed by British charity sustain maternal and child-welfare works in many parts of India, whose devoted British doctors and nurses attempt to teach the dhais. But the task is extremely difficult. Invariably the dhais protest that they have nothing to learn, in which their clients agree with them. One medical woman said in showing me her dhai class, an appalling array of decrepit old crones:
"We pay these women, out of a fund from England, for coming to class. We also pay some of them not to practice, a small sum, but just enough to live on. They are too old, too stupid and too generally miserable to be capable of learning. Yet, when we beg them not to take cases because of the harm they do, they say: 'How else can we live? This is our only means to earn food.' Which is true."
A characteristic incident, freshly happened when it came to my knowledge, concerned a Public Health instructor stationed, by one of the funds above mentioned, in the north. To visualize the scene, one must think of the instructor as what she is--a conspicuously comely and spirited young lady of the type that under all circumstances looks chic and well-groomed. She had been training a class of dhais in Lahore, and had invited her "graduates" when handling a difficult case to call her in for advice.
At three o'clock one cold winter's morning of 1926, a graduate summoned her. The summons led to the house of an outcaste, a little mud hut with an interior perhaps eight by twelve feet square. In the room were ten people, three generations of the family, all save the patient fast asleep. Also, a sheep, two goats, some chickens and a cow, because the owner did not trust his neighbors. No light but a glim in an earthen pot. No heat but that from the bodies of man and beast. No aperture but the door, which was closed.
In a small alcove at the back of the room four cot beds, planted one upon another, all occupied by members of the family. In the cot third from the ground lay a woman in advanced labor.
"Dhai went outside," observed Grandmother, stir-ting sleepily, and turned her face to the wall.
Not a moment to be lost. No time to hunt up the àhai. By good luck, the cow lay snug against the cot-pile. So our trig little English lady climbs up on the back of the placid and unobjecting cow, and from that vantage point successfully brings into the world a pair of tiny Hindus--a girl and a boy.
Just as the thing is over, back comes the dhai, in a rage. She had been out in the yard, quarreling with the husband about the size of the coin that he should lay in her palm, on which to cut the cord--without which coin already in her possession no canny dhai will operate.
And this is merely an ordinary experience.
"Our Indian conduct of midwifery undoubtedly should be otherwise than it is," said a group of Indian gentlemen discussing the whole problem as it exists in their own superior circle, "but is it possible, do you think, that enough English ladies will be found to come out and do the work inclusively?"
A fractional percentage of the young wives are now found ready to accept modern medical help. But it is from the elder women of the household that resistance both determined and effective comes.
Says Dr. Agnes C. Scott, M.B., B.S., of the Punjab, one of the most distinguished of the many British medical women today giving their lives to India:[19]
[19. V.M.S.F. Report, p. 91. Cf. Sir Patrick Hehir, The Medical Profession in India, Henry Frowde & Hodder and Stoughton, Ion-don, 1923, pp. 125-31.]
An educated man may desire a better-trained woman to attend on his wife, but he is helpless against the stone wall of ignorance and prejudice built and kept up by the older women of the zenana who are the real rulers of the house.
Dr. K. O. Vaughan says upon this point:[20]
[20. Ibid., p. 101.]
The women are their own greatest enemies, and if any one can devise a system of education and enlightenment for grandmother, great-grandmother and great-great-grandmother which will persuade them not to employ the ignorant, dirty Bazaar dhai, they will deserve well of the Indian nation. In my opinion that is an impossible task.
And another woman surgeon adds:[21]
[21. Ibid,, p. 71.]
Usually a mother-in-law or some ancient dame superintends the confinement, who is herself used to the old traditions and insists on their observance...It has been the immemorial custom that the management of a confinement is the province of the leading woman of the house, and the men are powerless to interfere.
Thus arises a curious picture--the picture of the man who has since time immemorial enslaved his wife, and whose most vital need in all life, present and to come, is the getting of a son; and of this man, by means none other than the will of his willing slave, balked in his heart's desire! He has thought it good that she be kept ignorant; that she forever suppress her natural spirit and inclinations, walking ceremonially, in stiff harness, before him, her "earthly god." She has so walked, obedient from infancy to death, through untold centuries of merciless discipline, while he, from infancy to death, through untold centuries, has given himself no discipline at all. And now their harvests ripen in kind: hers a death-grip on the rock of the old law, making her dead-weight negative to any change, however merciful; his, a weakness of will and purpose, a fatigue of nerve and spirit, that deliver him in his own house, beaten, into the hands of his slave.
Of Indian babies born alive about 2,000,000 die each year. "Available statistics show," says the latest Census of India, "that over forty per cent, of the deaths of infants occur in the first week after birth, and over sixty per cent, in the first month."[22]
[22. Census of India, 1921, Vol. I, Part I, p. 133.]
The number of still births is heavy. Syphilis and gonorrhea are among its main causes, to which must be added the sheer inability of the child to bear the strain of coming into the world.
Vital statistics are weak in India, for they must largely depend upon illiterate villagers as collectors.
If a baby dies, the mother's wail trails down the darkness of a night or two. But if the village be near a river, the little body may just be tossed into the stream, without waste of a rag for a shroud. Kitea and the turtles finish its brief history. And it is more than probable that no one in the village will think it worth while to report either the birth or the death. Statistics as to babies must therefore be taken as at best approximate.
It is probable, however, in view of existing conditions, that the actual figures of infant mortality, were it possible to know them, would surprise the western mind rather by their smallness than by their height. "I used to think," said one of the American medical women, "that a baby was a delicate creature. But experience here is forcing, me to believe it the toughest fabric ever made, since it ever survives."