View report page

40
disease, in the other 3 cases death is believed to have been
caused by the stress of the disease alone. Seven of the children
died at home, 2 in the Poor Law Infirmary, and the rest in
general hospitals.
Pneumonia and Bronchitis caused 78 deaths, as compared
with 68 in 1909, and 71 in 1908. Nearly all these deaths are
preventable, if parents would only refrain from exposing their
children to wet and inclement weather, to great and sudden
changes of temperature, and if they would clothe the babies
warmly and sufficiently in wool or flannel, instead of in cotton
or flannelette.
Some of these deaths are due to pneumonia following measles
or hooping cough, in which the information of the primary
disease has been withheld or forgotten.
Eighteen of the cases died in hospital, 4 in poor-law institutions,
and the rest, 56 in number, at home.
Fifty-six belonged to Clerkenwell, 22 to St. Luke's. The
inference is that deaths among the infants due to exposure is
much commoner in Clerkenwell than in St. Luke's. The parents
were nearly all in poor circumstances, 27 were labourers or
carmen. Six of the children were illegitimate.
Diarrhœal Diseases amongst infants caused 42 deaths in
1910, as against 64, 80, and 42 deaths in the three previous
years. These diseases are chiefly prevalent during the summer
months, and mostly affect those children that are artificially fed,
though breast-fed children do not wholly escape. With a view
to their prevention, mothers are exhorted not to wean their
children during the warm weather, and to observe the utmost
care in the preparation of the child's food, to discard the dummy
teat, and to attend very carefully to their own personal cleanliness.
There is reason to believe that this group of diseases in
children is in some degree infectious and associated with the
presence in milk, in feeding utensils, on the dummy teat, in the
feeding bottle, or on the mother's breast in the case of suckling
infants, of dirt contaminated with the specific germs. These
diseases attack the fat and healthy babies and those that are thin
and delicate—first children and later children, breast-fed children,
and children artificially fed.