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18
INFANTILE MORTALITY.
The infantile mortality is a special death-rate referring to the first age
period (0 to 1 year), and is expressed as the number of deaths that take place
amongst children under one year of age per thousand births registered.
The number of such deaths occurring amongst Edmonton children, and
registered within or without the District within the year, was 227, and the
births registered within or without the district, born of Edmonton mothers,
numbered 1931; therefore the infantile death-rate, based on these figures, is
117.41 per thousand births. This does not tally with the rate in Column 6,
Table I. of the Local Government Board, because there the total deaths
registered in the District are recorded, and they only amount to 213, which
produces a death-rate of 106.50; this is the lowest record on Table I., and no
less than 41.08 below the average of the ten previous years. But the true
infantile death-rate, 117.41, is 3.75 lower than last year.
The Infantile Mortality Rate for the year, in England and Wales, was
121; in London, 113; in the 76 great towns, 128; and in the 142 smaller
towns (which include Edmonton), 124 per thousand births registered.

Table V. was first issued by the Local Government Board in 1905.
It enables the death among infants under one year of age from certain
causes to be recorded in weeks and months of age. The information collected
by this means for the whole country will prove of great value in indicating
the true significance that should be attached to the mortality in the various
age - groups.
The Table shows that in the first month over 80 per cent. of the deaths
were due to what are termed "wasting diseases." This is a great advance
over last year, when the percentage was 68. These are conditions that for
the most part manifest themselves at the birth of the infant, and depend
on bad ante-natal circumstances, associated with the health of the mother,
such as factory work, drink, venereal disease, and the use of abortifacients,
rather than on any external influence to which the child becomes subject after
birth, such as improper feeding, clothing, or exposure. Although adverse
external influences may begin to operate from the moment of birth, it is
not, as shown by the Table, until the second month of life that they begin to