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57
[1906
From this we see that from the decade 1886-90 to the present date,
the rate has only fallen from 147 per 1,000 births to 130 in the decade
1901-5. In other words that where in the former period out of every hundred
births 15 infants died, in the latter period 13 died. The reduction is so insignificant
that it may be considered of little moment, and that the record of
these sad deaths, arrived at for the most part through untold suffering, remains
stationary. If such a state of affairs were to have been the result of the sanitary
efforts put forward to prevent illness and to reduce the death-rate among the
population at large it would be conceded at once that they had been without
avail and that the money spent on them had been thrown away. Unhappily no
attempt has been made and therefore no expenditure has been incurred in
endeavouring to lessen the mortality among these little ones.
It is nearly thirty years since the present Medical Officer of Health of
Islington, then a young private practitioner, first drew attention to this waste
of infant life*, but although the subject was afterwards commented upon by
the "Lancet" and other medical papers, nothing was done. The public were
careless, and the importance of the subject had not yet been brought home to
the nation, whose leaders have only recently commenced to grasp its serious
consequence to the growth and virility of the country. A nation with a
young population is full of energy, vitality, and "go," whereas, when the
opposite is the case its people are much less vigorous and energetic in their
pursuits.
The causes of the 1,083 deaths among infants is set out in-Table XXVII,
which also gives a summary of those in the preceding ten years. Its careful
study will show that many of the deaths there recorded are entirely preventable,
and, therefore, would not have occurred if only the mothers knew and understood
the duties of maternity and the method of rearing children.
In this connection it may be stated that during the summers of 1905 and
1906 special inquiries were made as to the method of feeding of 220 infants
who had died from diarrhœal diseases, when it was found that only 23, or 10.5
per cent., were reared on the breast alone, while 197, or 89.5 per cent., were
fed on cows' milk and artificial foods.
It was further ascertained that 72, or 32.7 per cent., were fed from a boat
bottle, 112, or 50.9 per cent., from a tube bottle, and 13, or 5.9 per cent., from
a spoon or cup.
* " The Preventive Causes of Infantile Mortality," a Lecture delivered before the Portsmouth
Literary and Scientific Society.