Still-Birth: Its Causes, Pathology, and Prevention *Abstract of Report to the Medical Research Council on Still-birth: Its Causes, Pathology, and Prevention, May 1921.

The following report is based upon a post-mortem examination of 200 consecutive cases of still-birth and neonatal death occurring in the Royal Maternity Hospital, Edinburgh, from 1st August 1919 till October 1920. Of these, 120 were still-births and 80 neonatal deaths. The term still-birth is used in the more popular sense to include infants born dead at and after 28 weeks of pregnancy, as well as those born with the heart beating, but which failed to breathe after complete birth of the head and body. The term neonatal death, on the other hand, is used to include all infants in whom respiration took place after complete birth, even though the child had only gasped a few times. Most of the neonatal deaths occurred in infants during the usual period of the mother's stay in hospital after confinement, viz., 10 days, but one or two