Saving babies.

Six part series on major developments in medicine since the inauguration of the NHS fifty years ago. "Part 2: Saving Babies" Dr. Beryl Corner began her career in 1934 as a paediatrician at Southmead Hospital, Bristol, where she was the first doctor to specialise in this field. She worked to reduce Bristol's high rate of infant mortality. In 1946 she opened the city's first specialist babycare unit and in 1949 she set up a flying squad of midwives to deal with neonatal emergencies. She supervised the care of the world's first quadruplets to be born by caesarian section, an event which attracted much newsreel coverage, and discovered that oxygen administered to newborn babies (in the days before incubators became available) could cause blindness. Under her influence premature baby units sprang up nationwide, but the increased survival rate was accompanied by the problem of jaundice, leading to cerebral palsy. Dr. Corner discovered how to prevent this condition so that two-thirds of the babies she treated survived in a healthy condition. The programme contains much interesting archive footage concerning babycare in hospital and at home, and of the Bristol quadruplets whose progress she recorded up to adulthood.