Medicine: Flexible Autocrat

This week a grave loss, long foreseen but hardly realized, befalls the University of Chicago’s Lying-in Hospital: Birthroom Supervisor Mabel C. Carmon, 68, most famed obstetrical nurse in the U.S., is going to retire. In her 44 years as a birthroom supervisor, Nurse Carmon has taught obstetrics to 6,864 student nurses, has heard the first indignant cries of 104,988 babies.

Said Dr. M. Edward Davis, a senior staff member: “The progress made in declining mortality rates of mothers is dramatic. And here’s a woman who’s had a very dramatic part in making it true. She is the most gifted teacher that American nursing has ever had.”

Enlightened Interns. Mabel Carmon has been variously described as tolerant, courageous, fairminded, flexible, modest, sweet and shy, a machine, a perfectionist, an autocrat. Some staff members would have liked to boot her out the window when they came in as young interns, but they learned to respect her and admire her.

Medical-school students are taught that a woman is ready to give birth when the cervix has dilated to ten centimeters, and should be moved to the delivery room when dilation has reached nine centimeters. Some shiny new interns at Lying-in, depending on this rule-of-thumb, have had arguments with Nurse Carmon over the proper time to move a mother. In every case that Lying-in can remember, Carmon was right. Said one chastened doctor: “If my patient had dilated to only two centimeters and Carmon said she ought to go to delivery, I’d take her there.”

Mabel Carmon grew up in Streator, Ill., took her training at Chicago’s Wesley Memorial Hospital, soon became the “righthand gal” of Dr. Joseph B. DeLee, who headed Lying-in from its opening in 1895 to his death in 1942. She first went to work for him in 1907, when Lying-in was running a three-bedroom, gaslit hospital in Chicago’s stockyards district, and when nearly all U.S. infants were born at home.*

Retiring Author. Dr. DeLee had published (in 1904) a textbook called Obstetrics for Nurses. As successive editions appeared, Nurse Carmon contributed more & more of her own experience, and in the eleventh printing, DeLee formally listed her as coauthor. Now in its 15th printing, Obstetrics for Nurses is the most widely used text of its kind in the U.S., has been translated into Chinese (on microfilm) and Spanish, has sold nearly 300,000 copies.

Last week, on the verge of retirement, Miss Carmon was reluctantly talking about herself to reporters and photographers when she heard a commotion in the hall. It was an expectant mother arriving and in a hurry. Nurse Carmon walked out on the press and went to work.

*Today, more than 85% are born in hospitals.