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An inspection of the above table shows that 227,
or 59 per cent. of the total infant deaths during 1920, occurred
during the first three months of life. Analysing the deaths
during the first three months more closely—as will be seen
from an inspection of Table IV. in the Appendix—11 per
cent. of the total deaths occurred during the first twenty-four
hours of life, while 24.6 per cent. did not survive the first week.
Practically all these deaths were due to prematurity, marasmus,
debility, and developmental diseases, and of the deaths at
ages under four weeks the proportion due to those causes is
74 per cent.
It is evident, therefore, that the greater proportion of the
deaths of infants in the earlier weeks of life can be ascribed
to influences which are largely pre-natal. To what extent
these influences are preventable is, of course, one of the
problems of maternity and child welfare work. The total
infant mortality rate has fallen steadily during recent years,
owing in part, no doubt to the preventive measures taken by
sanitary authorities. This decrease mainly affects the other
two principal groups of diseases—vie., respiratory and
abdominal—which are more amenable to measures such as those
that have been up to the present carried out.
It should not be forgotten, also, that many of these
children born suffering from the results of what are known as
the " racial poisons," yet manage to survive the first year of
life, only to grow up under the handicap of these inherited