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the Public Health Committee, and after discussion it
was decided to decline the offer under present conditions.
As a matter of fact the total number of births
reported voluntarily by the midwives during the year
is only about 800, and the inspection and re-inspection
of these is well within the capabilities of the present
staff.
I must confess that I am not particularly in love
with amateur inspection. The ladies who undertake
this work are usually full of zeal but deficient in tact
and experience, their knowledge of the causes of
infantile mortality, (acquired from books and lectures),
is undigested and the advice they give is apt to be
contradictory in small details. The importance of
these may be slight yet they are liable to be seized
upon and used as excuses for failure to obey instructtions.
The investigations of Miss Harris, our woman
sanitary inspector shew that in many cases poverty
and not ignorance is the root of the evil. It occasionally
occurs that owing to insufficient nourishment the
mother's milk has failed and the cheapest substitute
has to be resorted to. What is the use of advising a
mother, whose breasts have dried up and whose
pockets are empty, to feed her infant on milk and
cream diluted in scientific proportions, when she has
the greatest difficulty in purchasing even the cheapest
brand of condensed milk?
Some of the accounts brought in by Miss Harris are
positively heartrending, and although members of the