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37
INFANTILE MORTALITY.
The Infantile Mortality Rate for the year is 106 per 1,000 births.
This is the lowest rate hitherto experienced in Willesden.
Although infantile mortality has shown a steady decrease during
the last 30 years and has been exceptionally reduced during recent
years owing to the special efforts directed to this end there can be no
question that the low mortality of 1907 was materially influenced as
already pointed out by the favourable meteorological features of the
year.
Although comparatively the infantile mortality rate is a low one,
it is as a matter of fact still far in excess of what might be achieved
under reasonable conditions of infant upbringing.
That there should be great wastage of infant life is in accord
with natural law. That is to say observed fact discloses this phenomenon
throughout the animal world. It does not mean that there
is necessarily any merit or advantage in this order of things. It is
merely an observed fact that organisms at lower levels of development
are subject to a high rate of destruction.
This is sometimes referred to as a "provision" to secure continuity
of the species and it is inferred that not infrequently exuberant
reproduction and an accompanying excessive destruction leads to
survival of the fittest. This means no more than that the fittest are
the survivors and the truism has not led us one step towards saying
whether these are desirable or not.
This distinction is important, for many people think that in the
fittest there has been secured some developmental advantage, whereas
all that has been secured is the survivors under existing conditions.
And these existing conditions may be altogether undesirable and the
survivors even less so.
Applied to the problem of infantile mortality it is simply the
sheerest nonsense to suppose that a great destruction of infants every
year is promoting the culture of the race, and that the bad conditions
which permit of this are adding to the strength and physical vigour