NEAR PERFECTION.

Auckland Star, Volume LXII, Issue 40, 17 February 1931, Page 11

NEAR PERFECTION.

Mention is made in an exchange of the Wilhelmina Hospital, at Amsterdam, Holland, which is given up to maternity work chiefly, and is said to Tie a model of thoroughness in every department. The mothers who are fortunate enough to go to this wonderful hospital have every modern care that science can devise. There are .170 beds, half for diseases .of .women and half for maternity cases. The leading professor of these subjects takes his classes there, and there is every equipment in the lecture hall, diagrams, cinematograph, etc., that can be imagined as lending point and assistance to the lectures. In connection with this statement, it seems to point a way by which' further education could 'be given to students without insisting on a number of the patients being used for demonstration purposes, perhaps trenching on privacy or damaging sensitive feelings. The hospital has its own X-ray, ultra-ray, and diathermy equipment, and is open night and day. There is a laboratory for chemical and bacteriological work, and there are general, special and babies' wards. If a mother comes in for treatment, her. baby comes too. There arc incubators for premature infants, and an isolation ward for septic cases. The expectant mothers have a separate ward, as do" the further developed cases. The nurses have the top floor of the three-storey building, and there also is a museum, with plaster casts, models, etc. The suggestion', is made in "The Evening Post" that this is the sort of hospital whichshould bo prepared to welcome the long-looked-for professor of obstetrics, whose" advent in Hew Zealand will be regarded with special, interest by all those who helped to gather the fund which made the appointment possible: As part of his work will be in training students, and that has, so far, pre- | sented some difficulties, the suggestions I made may have some value.

The first meeting of the Waiotahi Women's Institute for 1931 was.held on Wednesday last, Mrs. Toone presiding. A -considerable part of the afternoon was taken up in arranging ways and means of helping in the Hawke's . Bay earthquake relief. Thrift hints and demonstrations were useful and ingenious. The afternoon passed. quickly, and all members took up their different posts with renewed zest for the coming year.