Patent Design Description.

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[page 2]

Patented May 1, 1951 2,551,560
UNITED STATES PATENT OFFICE
2,551,560
MOTHER MANIKIN FOR TEACHING AP-
PROVED PRACTICE OF OBSTETRICS
AND MIDWIFERY
Julia Oleander Graves, Savannah, Ga.
Original Application December 27, 1949, Serial No.
135,156. Divided and this application October
18, 1950, Serial No. 190,858
2 Claims. (Cl. 35--17)
1 2
[left column]
This invention relates to education appara-
tus for teaching, by means of demonstration, the
approved practice of obstetrics.
There are many sections of the country in
which modern knowledge and procedure in the 5
practice of obstetrics is not wide spread, but in
which, on the contrary, the majority of child
births are entrusted to midwives whose training
is limited to that acquired through experience.
It is upon the supposition that the older the mid- 10
wife the more experience she has, that the more
elderly midwives have gained a prestige over the
younger members of the group, so that they
bring to the childbed traditional practices which
do not make sense, and some of which are posi- 15
tively detrimental to the welfare of mother and
child .
The practice is reflected in the statistics which
show that in those places where the practice of
obstetrics is for the most part left to unlicensed 20
midwives with no standard of qualifications, the
mortality rate of mothers, as well as new born
babies, is much greater than in the more favored
sections where hospitalization and scientific
technique are the customary resort. 25
State agencies endeavoring to raise the stand-
ard of obstetrical qualifications are confronted
with the alternative of refusing to license the
great bulk of midwives, or of offering them as a
condition to eligibility for a license, a short course 30
in the only practical method of training that is
adapted to their very limited educational status,
that is, by a system of demonstration. The first
alternative is impractical, since there are not
enough qualified nurses to go around, and in the 35
hinterlands where the need for improved knowl-
edge and methods is greatest, the people would
resort to the midwives, licensed or not.
The present invention represents one of the
correlated phases in a system of instruction by 40
means of which a qualified instructor can demon-
strate to a class of limited literacy, in an interest-
ing and easily understood manner, the phenom-
ena of parturition and the procedures required in
a normal delivery, as well as the more common 45
exigencies of birth encountered sooner or later in
the experience of the midwife. The system com-
prises these elements, employed singly and in
combination.
(a) The mother manikin. 50
(b) The fetus doll.
(c) The placenta, per se, or in combination
with the fetus.
Said three elements or features are disclosed
In my pending application Serial Number 135,156, 55
[right column]
filed December 27, 1949. The present application
covers the mother manikin, and is a divisional ap-
placation, out of said pending application, by offi-
cial requirement.
One of the objects of the invention is to provide
a mother manikin substantially full size, having
an abdominal cavity open at the front, selectively
closable by one of three ventral covers of dif-
ferent degrees of convexity, copied from nature,
representing the shape at the three trimestral
periods of pregnancy, by means of which the mid-
wife can learn to judge by observation how far
the gestation period has run, in the examination
of her patients.
Another object of the invention is to provide
a mother manikin as described, in which the ad-
dominal cavity is sufficiently capacious to enable
the instructor using a full size flexible jointed
fetus doll to demonstrate the several positions
which the fetus may occupy in the abdomen at
the time of delivery.
Still another object of the invention is to pro-
vide the mother manikin with a flexible and ex-
pansible vagina forming a wall of the abdominal
cavity, sufficiently large to permit the fetus doll
to pass through it.
Another object of the invention is to make the
mother manikin with jointed head and limbs so
that various positions assumed by the mother
can be demonstrated, such as the knee-chest at-
titude, useful in retarding delivery.
Other objects of the invention will appear as
the following description of a preferred and
practical embodiment thereof proceeds.
In the drawings throughout the figures of
which the same reference characters have been
used to denotes the same part:
Figure 1 is a front elevation of the mother
manikin.
Figure 2 is a side elevation, partly in section.
Referring now in detail to the figures, the
numeral I represents the mother manikin as a
whole, which preferably has the size and gen-
eral likeness of an actual woman, the head, arms
and legs being preferably jointed, as shown, so
that the manikin can be made to assume various
positions of which the human body is capable.
The manikin may be made of any suitable ma-
terial such as papier-mache, plastic, etc., and may
be covered with a skin in appearance and to the
touch.
The manikin I is provided with an abdominal
cavity 2, which opens in the ventral surface of
the body, and which is sufficiently capacious to

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