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but were in a debilitated condition due to causes which are, alas !
too common amongst the poorer classes, viz., insufficient or
unsuitable nourishment and too frequent pregnancies. As a rule,
the mother is not an insured person., and consequently is slow to
seek timely medical advice. The result is disastrous to her child
as well, and it is not, therefore, surprising to find, on looking at
the table on page 16, a high proportional mortality from congenital
and developmental diseases.
The remedy for this unfortunate state of things is to be found
in better provision being made for the expectant and nursing
mother. Sanitary Authorities are not yet able to deal with this
aspect of the problem of infant mortality, but signs are not wanting
that the public attention is being increasingly directed to this
aspect of the question.
The saving in infant life which has taken place in recent years
has been the outcome of the solid spade work carried out in urban
areas owing to the activity of the Sanitary Authorities. A glance at
the chart next to page 14 will show the extent to which this saving
of life has taken place in Battersea, and the same steady rate of
improvement is observable throughout the country—most evident
in those districts where the energy and enterprise of the Sanitary
Authorities in this connection is well marked.
A comparison between the infant mortality in urban and rural
communities points, as experience confirms, to the fact that conditions
prevailing in most urban districts, especially in industrial
centres, are inimical to infant life. It has consequently been the
aim of Municipal Authorities to overcome the handicap which
children born in towns have to overcome, and the efforts of such
Authorities have been directed towards securing, as far as possible,
the removal or amelioration of those unfavourable conditions
which experience teaches are more prevalent amongst urban than
amongst rural populations.
Much has therefore been accomplished by the measures
already so successfully in operation in most urban areas, such, for
example, as the appointment of a staff of Health Visitors, whose
work has proved of incalculable value, owing to their propagandist
work in visiting the homes of infants for the purpose of giving
advice to mothers which is helpful to them in the rearing of their
children through the manifold dangers of infant life, and in securing
the removal of insanitary conditions in the homes.
Voluntary organisations working in the same direction, and
acting more or less in co-operation with the Health Authorities,
have given useful help. The work of such bodies has, however,
suffered through absence of co-ordination of effort and the difficulty
of providing in poorer districts an adequate supply of trained