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205
The following table is intended to show the deaths of babies
who at one time or another during their first year attended a
clinic, as compared with deaths among those who never attended.
If a baby only attended once it is included in the clinic returns : —

2,194 babies under one year of age attended the clinics for the
first time during 1933. Within the same period 3,147 babies
were born and 148 died ; 26 of these latter are not included in the
above table, as information concerning them was not obtainable.
Although the clinic attendance figures and the births and deaths
figures do not cover exactly the same periods, the attendances of
new cases at the clinics do not fluctuate so greatly as to cause
serious error. Of the 122 babies who died, 25 had attended a
clinic in Croydon and 97 had not attended, i.e., 20.5% of the
deaths were in clinic babies and 79.5% in non-clinic babies. Of
the 3,147 babies born, approximately 70% attended or would
attend on calculation based on past attendances. The infantile
mortality, estimated on this basis is only 11.6 per 1,000 births for
the "clinic" babies, and 101.8 per 1,000 births for non-clinic
babies.
The following table is interesting, especially when the figures
for under 1 year are contrasted with those for over 1 year.
Approximately 89% of the former group of babies were found
healthy on their first visit and were presumably brought because
their mothers desired expert opinion and advice quite apart from
treatment; in the latter group, only 80% were found healthy on
the first visit, which may be interpreted to mean that when a
mother first attends a clinic with a child over a year old she does