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state that they are very anxious, if sufficient financial
support can be obtained, to develop further this side of
the work by establishing a Medical Inspection Centre for
.children under school age, so that skilled supervision may
be continued during childhood. The need for bridging
over the interval between infancy and school age is
proved by the fact that the medical examination of
"entrants" into infant schools shows that a great amount
of undetected and neglected disease is rife among
children between infancy and school age, implying
a deplorable amount of neglected work in the prevention
of disease by early treatment and advice.
With proper care before school age, children would
be saved much suffering, and much of the money
now spent in treating preventible diseases at School
Clinics and elsewhere would be saved.
164 or 40 per cent. of the deaths of infants under
one year of age occurred in the first four weeks of life,
and 108 or 26.4 per cent in the first seven days. The
mortality rate of infants in the first month of life was in
1913, 39 per 1,000 births compared with an average
rate of 36 per 1,000 in the five years 1908-12. The
majority of these deaths, ascribed mainly to prematurity,
congenital malformations, atelectasis, injury at birth and
marasmus, were due to ante-natal causes which are but
little affected by existing preventive methods, and the fact
that in the six years under consideration the mortality
at this age period has not fallen, indeed has slightly
increased, whereas the mortality rate of infants between
1 and 12 months was in 1913, 16 per 1,000 below the
average rate of the preceding five years, furnishes
evidence of the success of those preventive methods of
which a further extension is advocated.
Deaths of Illegitimate Children.
Of the 412 children who died before attaining the
age of one year, 48 or 11.7 per cent. were illegitimate,
the mortality among them being in the proportion
of 227 deaths per 1,000 births against 89 per 1000
among children born in wedlock.