xt7ns17spd0d https://exploreuk.uky.edu/dips/xt7ns17spd0d/data/mets.xml The Frontier Nursing Service, Inc. 1974 bulletins  English The Frontier Nursing Service, Inc. Contact the Special Collections Research Center for information regarding rights and use of this collection. Frontier Nursing Service Quarterly Bulletins Frontier Nursing Service Quarterly Bulletin, Vol. 49, No. 4, Spring 1974 text Frontier Nursing Service Quarterly Bulletin, Vol. 49, No. 4, Spring 1974 1974 2014 true xt7ns17spd0d section xt7ns17spd0d VOLUME 49 SPRING. I974 NUMBER 4
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\ A \
THE WELL-WORN PATH TO HYDEN HOSPITAL
 
Photograph Courtesy of "T0ad Hall"

 l
Us ISSN 0016-2116  
2
l
~ I
#2*
ii
 
The cover picture, looking down the steps  
from Hyden Hospital toward town, was  
taken by Gabrielle Beasley who is hoping  
1
to form a limited company-—"Toad Hall" I
—which will publish her photographs and _1
her brother’s poems. 4,
  ‘ i
FRONTIER NURSING SERVICE QUARTERLY BULLETIN  
Published at the end of each Quarter by the Frontier Nursing Service, Inc. )¤
Lexington, Ky. ip;
Subscription Price $2.00 a. Year  
Edit0r’s Office. \Vend0ver, Kentucky 41775 ,,»<
VOLUME 49 SPRING, 1974 NUMBER 4  Q
Second class postage paid at Lexington, Ky. 40507 ·v
Send Form 3579 t0 Frontier Nursing Service, Wendover, Ky. 41775  "
Copyright, 1974, Frontier Nursing Service, Inc.  
 i
z

  5 CONTENTS
{N ARTICLE AUTHOR PAGE
i A Commentary The Assistant Editor 15
* Beyond the Mountains 32
i Cherish the Children (lllus.) 10
 E Elda Barry, Nurse-Midwife Jamestown (N .Y.} Post-Journal 13
  Field Notes 35
   i Future Family Nurses A Photograph Inside Back
Cover
X Guest Commentary E. B. White 11
"  Home Delivery Marion James and
{ Kathy Steinert 30
L} In Memoriam 26
E Myths About Nurse-Midwifery Ruth W. Lubic 5
{ Old Courier News 17
  Old Staff News 21
  The Annual Meeting 24
  The Horse‘s Prayer 2
l Urgent Needs 3
  Why ? Nancy Dam.mann 23
\
i BRIEF BITS
§ A Farmer . . . Modern Maturity 14
i A Father . . . Modern Maturity 25
Q Among the Population . . . The Countryman 4
  Colonel: . . . Modern Maturity 31
JL Devon Red The Countryman 18
l· Grave Business The Countryman 12
` Her Smile J. Houston Westover, M.D. 33
` ‘ Kwaams and Queaks The Countryman 9
 Q North Devon Countryman . . . The Countryman 17
 { Thirsty Work The Countryman 23
r Warwickshire Farmer’s Wife . . . The Countryman 39
Wedding Gifts 16
KA White Elephant 34
Q Your Methods . . . Modern Maturity 20
I
l

 2 FRONTIER NURSING SERVICE ___  
THE HORSE’S PRAYER  
TO THEE, MY MASTER, I offer my prayer: Feed me, water and care for me, g
and, when the day’s work is done, provide me with shelter, a clean dry bed and a V
stall wide enough for me to lie down in comfort. ·
Always be kind to me. Talk to me. Your voice often means as much to me as the
reins. Pet me sometimes, that I may serve you the more gladly and learn to love [
you. Do not jerk the reins, and do not whip me when going uphill. Never strike,  _
beat or kick me when Ido not understand what you want, but give me a chance to ‘  
understand you. Watch me, and ifI fail to do your bidding, see if something is not  
wrong with my harness or feet.  
Do not check me so that I cannot have the free use ofmy head. Ifyou insist that f
I wear blinders, so that I cannot see behind me as it was intended I should, I pray ¤, ·
you be careful that the blinders stand well out from my eyes. `
Do not overload me, or hitch me where water will drip on me. Keep me well i
shod. Examine my teeth when Ido not eat. I may have an ulcerated tooth, and that, i` 
you know, is very painful. Do not tie my head in an unnatural position, or take  i
away my best defense against flies and mosquitoes by cutting off my tail.  .
I cannot tell you when I am thirsty, so give me clean cool water often. Save me, i
by all means in your power, from that fatal disease—the glanders. I cannot tell you  ,
in words when I am sick, so watch me, that by signs you may know my condition.  
Give me all possible shelter from the hot sun, and put a blanket on me, not when I Z
am working but when I am standing in the cold. Never put a frosty bit in my mouth;  
first warm it by holding it a moment in your hands.  
I try to carry you and your burdens without a murmur, and wait patiently for  "
you long hours of the day or night. Without the power to choose my shoes or path, I  
sometimes fall on the hard pavements which I have often prayed might not be of  Q
wood but of such a nature as to give me a safe and sure footing. Remember thatl  ji
must be ready at any moment to lose my life in your service. gl
And finally, O MY MASTER, when my useful strength is gone, do not turn me  F
out to starve or freeze, or sell me to some cruel owner, to be slowly tortured and  
starved to death; but do thou, My Master, take my life in the kindest way, and your .
God will reward you here and hereafter. You will not consider me irreverent ifl ask
this in the name of Him who was born in a Stable. Amen. I 
Published by the AMERICAN HUMANE  
EDUCATION SOCIETY, 180 Longwood Avenue, iv
Boston, Massachusetts, and reprinted from V ii]
The Quarterly Bulletin of the Frontier Nursing Service, yl
Volume 22, Number 4, Spring, 1947 l  
G <
(See Field Notes)  
l.

 ` QUARTERLY BULLETIN 3
· URGENT NEEDS
4 On May 1, the Frontier Nursing Service was required to
_ implement the new Federal Minimum Wage Law which had been
 · passed by Congress in April of this year. We might add that to
date we have received no guidelines regarding the definitive
i  provisions of the new law from any agency of government.
  Following the action of Congress, the minimum wage for agencies
·g classified as a hospital was increased from $1.60 to $1.90 an hour,
  to be raised to $2.00 an hour on January 1, 1975. As a result, the
.   FNS faces a very substantial increase in its budget. This increase,
) coming at a time when the price of everything we have to buy
Q continues to soar, when we are still not being fully reimbursed at
_ Hyden Hospital for the care of elderly and indigent patients, when
° there is no reimbursement for preventive care—for keeping people
well and out of hospital—is a severe burden on the FNS.
Therefore, the most Urgent Need faced by FNS for the 1974-75
fiscal year is for funds to meet the increased cost of salaries and
._ wages. Some of you, who have given so generously over the years
‘ to our Urgent Needs, may want to help us with the additional costs
. we now face to meet our payroll and continue the work.
° The cost, to the FNS, of implementing the new minimum
. wage for our present staff is estimated as follows:
( For the fiscal year $95,500
For a month 7,958
For a 2-week pay period 3,673
For a week ` 1,836
1 For a 24-hour day 262
" . For an 8-hour shift 32
_.  For an hour 11
_ ‘ Gifts, whether for hours, days or weeks, will be most welcome.
Because of the frightful additional expense that has come to
the FNS as a result of the new minimum wage, we are making only
the most essential repairs which cannot be put off. All of our
' buildings are old and do require continual minor repairs to keep
them in good condition. There is one major repair we must do this

 4 FRoN·r1mR NURSING smzvrcrz _  ,
summer, and that is to re-roof the Jessie Preston Draper Center at “
Beech Fork. The estimated cost of the roof, new guttering and
other carpentry repairs is  s
$3,500.00
There is one further expense for each of the five outpost
centers that cannot be avoided. The average cost of heating each .
of the five centers for the winter is  ,
$600.00 per center per year rg
The Margaret Voorhies Haggin Quarters for Nurses is nearly  
twenty-five years old and the living room furniture is in poor  
condition and beyond repair. The sofas and chairs have not E l
collapsed completely yet, but the replacement of this furniture is  
an expense we are going to face in the very near future. We need ;
the following items: Y
1 Sofa (large) ........................................ $500.00 —_
2 Sofas (small) @ $300.00 each ....................... 600.00
2 Chairs @ $190.00 each ............................. 380.00
Any help with these anticipated expenses will be much
appreciated.
Among the population of Hurstbourne Tarrant, a village near
Andover, Hampshire, in 1957, were the following: Miss Plank,
Board School mistress; Mr. Cutting, butcher; Mr. Curd, milkman;
Mr. Smug, innkeeper; and Mr. Orchard, jobbing gardener.-
Hilary Bourne, Yorkshire.  {
—The Countryman, Summer 1973, Edited by Crispin Gill,  
Burford, Oxfordshire, England.  
Annual subscription for American readers . `
$5.50 checks on their own banks.
Published quarterly by The Countryman,
23-27 Tudor Street, London, E.C. 4.

  I QUARTERLY BULLETIN 6
I MYTHS ABOUT NURSE-MIDWIFERY
by Ruth W. Lubic
(Ms. Lubic, a graduate of the Maternity Center Association’s
former school of nurse-midwifery, is general director of the
Association. She was graduated from the Hospital of the
University ofPennsylvania School ofNursing, Philadel hia, and
` earned her bachelor’s and master`s degrees from Columbia
 _ University where she is now a doctoral candidate in applied
K, anthropology.)
  Nurse-midwives are first of all nurses, nurses whose
lt. practice has an added dimension.
° Today, we nurses pride ourselves in seeking out scientific
  rationale for nursing practice. Yet our acceptance of nursing
` folklore and what I call nursing mythology persists. Recently, at
- multidisciplinary meetings in which the professions of nursing
_· and medicine figured prominently, I was chagrined to hear
nurses, my own colleagues and peers whose integrity I know and
respect, repeating myths about nurse-midwifery. I wish to dispel
‘ some of these myths, for they can act as barriers to the acceptance
of midwifery practice as an appropriate role for nurses and even to
the improvement of maternity care.
MYTH: Nurse-midwives are delivery technicians.
Held by some leaders in maternity nursing education, this
myth, in my belief, results from a combination of ignorance of
nurse-midwifery education and practice and the influence of the
"granny" stereotype. The fact is that nurse-midwifery prides itself
on its public health roots and service.
Our historical beginnings in domiciliary practice heightened
,,  this public health orientation. Comprehensive maternity care is
  the base of our educational preparation and the joy of our practice.
 it We understand better than most, I believe, the drama, albeit brief,
i a of the delivery experience in the totality of the needs of families in
  their childbearing years. We, however, see no need to surrender
the care of the normal mother to physicians during the
intrapartum period when we are prepared to safely manage her
course and provide her with continuity of care. The midwife’s
intrapartum functions were ascribed to physicians in the zeal to
do away with ill-trained "grannies."

 c Fnomrxrm NURSING smwrcm _  
The de facto situation in this country is that nurses, I
educationally unprepared in intrapartum midwifery skills, are e
practicing them in delivery rooms. One has only to talk with labor
and delivery—room nurses away from teaching centers (and V
sometimes within them when educational activities are not
continuous) to know that often, due to pressures in the delivery _
suite, nurses must conduct deliveries. Therefore, should we not be r
preparing maternity nurses through an educational program to  
be of the greatest possible assistance to mothers and babies?  
MYTH: Nurse-midwifery is a new form of expanded role ._l_
and, as such, has ignored organized nursing. X
Nurse-midwifery is new neither in world maternity care nor —, 
here in the United States. Nurse-midwives were first introduced  
into a rural public health nursing agency, the Frontier Nursing  
Service in Kentucky, in 1925 by Mary Breckinridge, a nurse who i
went to Great Britain for her midwifery education. The Maternity  `
Center Association, under the leadership of Hazel Corbin, started Q
the first U.S. school of nurse-midwifery in 1931. Nurse-midwifery  `
had section status within the former National Organization for  
Public Health Nursing. However, in the revamping of nursing  .
organizations in 1952, when NOPHN went out of existence as a °
separate organization, nurse—midwives no longer had identity as  ‘
a group.
Many attempts to secure such identity in either the American
Nurses’ Association or the National League for Nursing were ·
made by nurse—midwives. Unsuccessful, they established in 1955 I
their own professional organization, the American College of
Nurse-Midwifery (now Nurse—Midwives). `
MYTH: Nurse-midwifery and nurse-midwives are unduly _*l‘
physician-dominated. ·· 
This is simply not true. Nurse-midwifery is taught by nurse- * V
midwives. The American College of Nurse-Midwives approves our “
educational institutions and certifies practitioners through a ,
national examination which is both theoretical and clinical.
Nurse-midwives have resumed, not assumed, the midwifery  
function related to care in the normal childbearing experience.  
What we have done, it seems to me, is willingly enter into a Y
colleague relationship with physicians. This has not meant

   QUARTERLY surirmiw 7
 - surrendering integrity. Our practices complement each other. We
  enjoy the mutual respect which comes with demonstrated and
A shared skills and judgment. We have attempted to put first, not
  our own professional territoriality, but rather the needs of
f patients. For we believe, unequivocally and I hope with humility,
I that nurse—midwifery care of the woman with an uncomplicated
 I pregnancy is qualitatively different from obstetrical care and,
  with its educational component, even more extensive. Physicians
.   who work with us recognize this fact. There has been no need to
E surrender autonomy. We are not exploited; I trust we do not
  exploit.
A MYTH: Nurse-midwives are physicians’ assistants.
 ` Nurse-midwifery has been promulgated by the Maternity
,  Center Association for over 40 years, not to assist any group of
V? professionals with a work load, but to provide high quality
V  maternity care to families. If, in support of this myth, a nursing
  director tells me that employing nurse-midwives in the labor and
delivery suite does not alleviate nursing care loads, then I must
. ask, "What are your nurses doing? How do they function? For
  what tasks are they responsible?" I would wonder if priority has
I been given to housekeeping and clerical tasks rather than to
` patient care. Are the nurses, in fact, performing administrative
‘ tasks and assisting physicians rather than assisting mothers?
» MYTH: Nurse-midwives practice in rural areas where
i there are no physicians.
j Perhaps it was the work of the Frontier Nursing Service
 j which gave rise to this myth. Certainly the "nurses on horseback"
A have always had great emotional appeal for the American public,
Q. and physicians and others who worked with them have spread
  their fame.
  It is true that until 1970, when the American College of
 _ ' Obstetrics and Gynecology recognized the place of the nurse-
` midwife on the obstetrical team, nurse—midwifery flourished
I mainly where there was a need for assistance in providing
quantitative care in both rural and urban areas. However, our
` practice is not a substitute for physician care—it complements
  physician care. Today, nurse-midwives are providing care to
` women of all socioeconomic strata through a variety of obstetrical

 8 FRONTIER NURSING smavrcm gg  ·
team models in a range of population densities.
MYTH: The best use of nurse-midwives is for home ·
delivery.
Our beginning in domiciliary practice may have given rise to I
this myth. The stereotype of "midwife" also may have added to it.
The best use of nurse-midwives is effected wherever care is V
being provided, with qualified medical supervision, to normal l g,
mothers. It is true that nurse-midwives, perhaps because of their g
domiciliary beginnings, tend to have a special appreciation of  
family-centered maternity care. It is also true that we are .i.
sympathetic toward those increasing numbers of parents who are I
"opting out of the system" because they find institutional care ,
cold, inconsiderate, undigniiied, and authoritarian. In my
opinion, however, home delivery should be provided only with the I
most careful consideration of the many parameters involved. If i
home delivery, in the judgment of the obstetrical team, is safe and
desirable for a particular family, then the nurse—midwife’s skills
can be well used. Her orientation toward support in labor with
minimal or no intervention, her expertise in preparing families for
‘ the emotional as well as physical aspects of childbearing, her -
professional preparation in evaluating the progress of pregnancy,
labor, and the puerperium for deviation from the normal, as well
as her freedom from the multitude of responsibilities demanding i
the physician’s more extensive knowledge and skills, do make her
the attendant of choice. .
MYTH: Nurse-midwives merely add "baby catching" to
maternity nursing.
This myth is regrettable, for it seems to me to be based on a ,
desire to divide, to separate, and to establish territory which must  
be held at all costs. Truly our education gives depth to our practice ° 
in all aspects of the childbearing experience. Again, I say that  ,
delivery is a small part of the maternity cycle; it is perhaps over- ·
dramatized, although those of us who are mothers might argue
the point. But my education to assist mothers with this process
fulfilled me as a nurse and expanded my understanding of
maternity care in a way difficult to describe. Why should nurses
not have an opportunity to manage with judgment the entire
miracle? Further, "catching the baby" is what a policeman, taxi

 ~ QUARTERLY BULLETIN s
driver, or other person who has little or no professional knowledge
of childbirth might do in an emergency. Nurse·midwives are in
· partnership with a woman to accomplish the safest and most
satisfying childbirth experience possible.
Conclusion
p Just as the word, "nurse-midwifery," has two components, so
l has the practice in my opinion.
g ; I could not abandon nursing, for nursing is a part of me-the
VF part that has made me a better midwife. The other side of that
“ coin, and in this I have unshakable belief, is that midwifery has
~<· made me a better nurse.
[Q Re rinted from the American Journal of Nursing,
V Fegruary 1974, with permission of The American
V Journal of Nursing Company.
, KWAAMS AND QUEAKS
A Shropshire farm hand who failed to turn up to work one day
told the farmer next day that his wife had had an ‘awd kwaam’.
The farmer, who was also a doctor, spent the rest ofthe day asking
1 all and sundry what an ‘awd kwaam’ might be. In fact the farm
R  hand had correctly pronounced EDB word ‘qualm’, mean1ng by it a
sudden attack of illness, nausea, faintness or distress. Illnesses of
various kinds were in my young days also described as ‘queaks’
(pinches) and if they were serious or prolonged they were ‘foul’, as
when a Shropshire woman remarked .to me of her neighbour who
was just recovering from a rather bad illness, ‘I doubt her’s had a
foul queak.’ Minor illnesses were described as a ‘breach’ of this or
‘ that, meaning a bout, for example a ‘breach’ of bronchitis. Also
 ._ from time to time individuals would come out with some peculiar
  and amusing names for complaints, for instance a neighbour
` ‘ whose daughter was crippled with ‘authoritis’. A lad whose
I , grandmother fell ill called at the house where she was employed to
s announce that ‘her’s got the bilgeons’—meaning a bilious attack.
My favourite description came from Tommy one moming when I
asked him how he was and he answered he was not so good. ‘Why,
what is wrong?’ ‘Oh, I be alright in meself, sirree, it’s me owd guts!
Evidently not part of himself!—J. O. Evans, Somerset.
—The Countryman, Summer 1973, Edited by Crispin Gill,
Burford, Oxfordshire, England.

 10 FRONTIER NURSING smnvrcm _ _
“CHERISH THE CHILDREN"
 —,   #.5 1,,.,   ‘· '  
    ’   A . ___, ; _i,{{; ..L""   
 l»-iles., ih      ° 4 i
is  . »   ‘·’-  "~ ~ ‘ *  ‘    lv. 5
  A     _ ···‘ ·~ I ._ a ‘ in  Ep,
`Y,   tk A
_ ‘     -ii         
    , `       
   Ny‘ ~      ‘  ; . · _ »   i
A FILM ns MADE
Photograph by Nancy Dammavm »
In April of this year, Airlie Production, under contract to the  A
Agency for International Development, came to the mountains to
film the work of a Frontier Nursing Service family nurse. The film I
crew included Mrs. Miriam Bucher, writer—producer, Paul _
Noonan, director of photography (shown above with Sekip  
Santurk, a Turkish student at Beloit College interning at Airlie),  
and David LaBarr, sound man. X
The 16mm. color film, twenty-eight minutes in length, is in the  X
process of being edited and will be entitled, "Cherish the
Children". It is designed primarily for use in Latin America, to
show elements of U.S. experience which might be useful in
training and orientation programs for doctors, nurses and
paramedics and will demonstrate the family nurse in training, in
hospital and clinic, and on the district.

 Q QUARTERLY BULLETIN 11
GUEST COMMENTARY
, By E. B. White
(Reprinted from "House Call"_of the Blue Hill Memorial Hoslpital
· Incorporated, Blue Hill, Maine, Volume 4, with the aut ors
~ permission)
As I write this, snow is falling. It is accumulating rapidly, and
W one gains anew the palpable sense of what distances mean in
E Maine. When I look out of the window, Bangor, Augusta,
g Portland, Boston seem far, far away. In yesterday’s paper, an
Et. article appeared warning us that federal controls, under the
` , Economic Stabilization Act, might spell the doom of small
· hospitals by forcing them out of business. If this were to happen,
T the loss to many communities in Maine would be incalculable, and
. the regulations would prove to be foolhardy. To an economist, to a
E statistician dreaming long dreams at his desk, a 100-bed hospital
» in an urban center may well appear to have an economic edge over
I a hospital such as the Blue Hill‘Memorial, with only a quarter the
number of beds. But "economics" is only one aspect of the vast
I enigma of health care and modern medicine, and on a day of wind
A and cold and swirling snow, a hospital that is accessible has the
 ~ edge, as far as a sick person is concerned, because the hospital is
_ "here" and not somewhere else.
E.  The idea of bigness has always intrigued our economic
  geniuses in Washington. Big, to them, means better—in this
 · instance more economical. A lot of us know that this is not
E necessarily so and that for every gain there is a loss. Years ago,
, educators decided that the only path to a decent education was
7 through the consolidation of schools and the discontinuance of
  the little red schoolhouse. Now, after many years, we discover that
*’ although there are many gains, there are also serious losses. Our
 ` country is full of distinguished, well-educated people who began
J: their schooling in a small building heated by a wood stove and
_ ` warmed by the presence of a dedicated teacher who had to handle
l several grades in one classroom. In some respects, those small
schools turned out students who were better grounded in the
fundamentals than are many of the youngsters of today who ride
to school in yellow buses and are offered a wider assortment of

 12 FRoN·r1E1>. Nunsmo smzvrcm ___ ·
studies and a more liberal experience than was possible in the Y
little corner school of yesterday. T
I am not against bigness where it works. I am not against
smallness where it works. The people of the Blue Hill area have
given of their time, their money, and their sweat to bring into `
being a small hospital that is a model of rural health facilities. We
should now make sure, through our legislators that no
government planner, sucking his pencil and totting up his figures, (
robs us of what has been so well conceived and is serving our local QQ
needs so faithfully and so well. T
GRAVE BUSINESS
Harry Haycock, known as Boxer, was a little ,
Northamptonshire man who combined the skills of poaching and ;
grave-digging. Realising that most people are afraid to go through
a churchyard after dusk, Boxer would use his lawful vocation to
further his unlawful one. When he had a grave to dig he would do
most of the work during the aftemoon, prior to the burial of the
deceased the following day. He would knock pegs into the side of qi
the unfinished grave. Then after dark he would proceed on his
poaching expedition, and bring back his kill to the grave, hanging
it on the pegs. The following day he would finish his digging, put  3~
the game in his hand-cart, cover it with grass or weeds and walk
innocently home. Everybody seemed to know of these goings-on
and many were recipients of the results of his efforts.—F. J.
Graystone, Northampton.
—The Countryman, Summer 1973, Edited by Crispin Gill,
Burford, Oxfordshire, England.

 » QUARTERLY Runrmm is
  ELDA BARRY, NURSE-MIDWIFE
"There was as much joy, thrill and excitement with the birth
of the last baby as there was with the first," says Elda Mae Barry,
. 401 E. Sixth St., of her 35 years experience in delivering 1,000
- babies as a nurse-midwife in India.
Born near Topeka, Kansas, Miss Barry became interested in
. nursing after recovering from a serious illness. After graduating
_€° from nursing school in Kansas City, she went to India under the
K Methodist Mission Board.
 ( She was assigned to a small hospital in Vrindaban, India, a
  rural town of 28,000 which at that time didn’t have electricity.
There was a small school of nursing connected with the hospital
which "was very much in the developing stages. Because of
prejudice, the caste system and general lack of education, nursing
was not considered to be one of the things that young girls did."
At first she was involved in teaching, supervising and
directing the student nurses and assisting in surgery. One of the
 1 problems she all too frequently encountered was the high
f mortality rate of newborn infants and mothers, primarily due to
infection from poor sanitation.
1 "By and large babies were delivered under the supervision of
1 untrained, uneducated national midwives who were midwives by
tradition." These national midwives were members of the lowest
 l caste because birth was considered "unclean". There was no
R knowledge of sanitation and much superstition. The only
obstetrical cases which the hospital received were those who were
having problems. They often came to the hospital too late because
. they had no prenatal care. Miss Barry came to realize that "the
. Indian nurse was not ready to meet the needs of her community
 , without training in midwifery."
` She went to Kentucky for a graduate course in midwifery with
the Frontier Nursing Service where she became one ofthe "nurses
 )~ on horseback." While aiding the people in the mountains of
A Kentucky, she delivered 24 babies. She returned to India and
delivered 1,000 babies oefore starting her school for midwives in
1948.
Her aim was "to work, not in competition with the national
midwives, but to work with them." Her nurses would go along
with the national midwives whose curiosity eventually overcame

 14 FRoN·r1ER NURSING smavicis _
their distrust and gradually they came to understand and accept
modern methods and the need for proper cleanliness. `
. Another of Miss Barry’s goals was to encourage the women to `
come to clinics for pre-natal care. Word of these clinics spread by
way of "the grapevine." As women began seeing the good effects
that this care was having on their neighbors, more and more
started coming to the clinic for pre-natal care and for follow-up
care after delivery. .
The young nurse-midwives who graduated from the nursing  
school had three years of general nursing instruction and one year l
of midwife training. When the nurses returned to the villages from A ,
which they came they had the opportunity of spreading their `
knowledge throughout their communities. Since 80 per cent of
India’s population lives in rural areas with limited medical
facilities, the effects of their training at the small hospital school A
was, indeed, far reaching.
Miss Barry feels that the use of midwives in this country, -
which has been gaining acceptance lately, is a good thing. She  
explains that "a trained midwife can provide valuable, close care  
to women who anticipate normal deliveries." "Midwifery in this .
country," she continues, "could be a cooperative venture between v_
mother, nurse-midwife and doctor with careful pre-natal care,
including instruction in the birth process, closer observation of
mothers in labor and frequent follow-up care."
Miss Barry found her work as a nurse, teacher and midwife
"exciting, rewarding and never dull." Surely the thousands of
infants and their mothers whom Miss Barry and her students
have helped would agree that she had found a purpose for her life.
by Maureen Helfrich, The Jamestown, New York
Post-Journal, May 18, 1974
A.
A farmer and his wife were visiting a large city and stopped at
a plush restaurant for lunch. The farmer studied the menu for a ·
while and then ordered hamburgers at $1.85 each. Turning to his
wife, he casually remarked, "The way these people have figured it,
we have a steer at home worth $50,000!"
—M0dern Maturity, Aug.-Sept., 1969

  _ QUARTERLY BuLLE·r1N 15
A COMMENTARY
By The Assistant Editor
The FNS has begun its fiftieth fiscal year—and we consider
i that fact alone, something of an accomplishment! Through
depression and inflation, wars and peace, floods, fires, good times
  and bad, the FNS has had the support of thousands of loyal
k ! supporters, patients, staff, but, by and large, its destiny has been
in the hands of two rather extraordinary Directors who have
~1 numbered among their many virtues a sense of humor—which
they have frequently needed.
T The FNS has been praised for being fifty years ahead of its
time—and penalized, at least where the government health dollar
, is concerned, because it was not just beginning, in the Sixties and
Seventies, a "new, innovative and creative" program. And yet
many of the "new" programs were starting to do what the FNS
· has been doing for forty years. It has been censured for being too
‘ static, for adhering too much to old traditions—and also for
forging ahead too rapidly with change. It has never iit into
anybody’s preconceived idea or set pattern of what a health care
~ organization should be and yet portions of its program have been
A a model for numerous health services in the United States and in
half of the countries around the globe. The FNS has always been
characterized by a certain amount of fluidity,