Outside the Chicago Maternity Center, in the sweltering slums just south of the Loop, sidewalk vendors hawk their wares: secondhand suits, used razor blades, bottles of Dr. Pryor's Jinx Removing Bath Crystals. After dark, dope pushers, prostitutes and gangs of toughs prowl the soiled asphalt. Yet, unlike cops and truant officers, center staffers are seldom molested in the neighborhood. Even the hoods greet them on their rounds.
The Chicago Maternity Center is unlike any other clinic in the U.S. Instead of taking expectant mothers to already-jammed charity wards, the center's delivery teams sally forth like commandos into the cramped, airless homes of the city's poor. Day or night, they never refuse a call. Despite the high percentage of last-minute cases, the teams have compiled a striking record: in more than 8,339 home deliveries during the last 30 months, no mother has died. Of some 300 pathological cases requiring hospitalization, only three have proved fatal.
Most Good on a Shoestring. Since its founding in 1895 by the late Obstetrician Joseph Bolivar De Lee, the center has always operated on a shoestring (1954 budget: $225,000, from the Community Fund and individual contributions), nevertheless has delivered some 104,000 babies, trained 1,154 doctors and 12,000 medical students. The men and women on its staff (two residents, six assistant residents, 15 medical students) go about their jobs in ordinary street clothes, travel by bus or in their own cars to deliver babies, as one nurse put it, "just about everywhere except in the maternity shop at Marshall Field's." Says tall, greying Dr. Beatrice E. Tucker, who, as Founder De Lee's successor, has been with the center 22 years: "This is the most fascinating neighborhood I know. You are located exactly where you can do the most good."
The center's gospel, laid down by Founder De Lee, is absolute cleanliness in the midst of squalor. As a sanitary aid, the delivery crews pack two odd accessories: newspapers and empty beer bottles. With the bottles as stiffeners, newspapers are rolled into bolsters to shield the mother from outside germs. Explains the center's Co-Director Dr. Harry B. Benaron: "We don't say that newspapers are germfree, but they are certainly cleaner than the sheets we find in the average home."
One hot day last fortnight, the newspapers and beer bottles—and the skill of the delivery team—were put to a greater test than usual. A call came in to the center's switchboard asking for a doctor to attend a Puerto Rican woman a half-hour's drive away. Quickly, a delivery crew assembled: Spanish-born Dr. Esteban Martin Martin. University of Wisconsin Medical Student Marvin Hinke and two visiting nurses. They picked up their black bags and set out in Dr. Martin's car. When it broke down (Martin's diagnosis: "Vascular ailment of the gas line"), the crew hiked the rest of the way to the patient's apartment.