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be laid at the door of cowkeepers and purveyors of milk. There is for instance a growing belief
that summer diarrhoea is due to the specific infection of food, and further, that the infectious
material, without which epidemic diarrhœa cannot occur, generally finds access to the food of
infants in their homes, rather than at the farms and in the milkshops from which their milk supply is
derived. The improper use of sound milk or its use in conjunction with foods which are giossly
unsuitable, must also be regarded as important factors in the causation of deaths from wasting
diseases for which the mother, rather than the dairyman, is responsible. A third important cause
of death is to be found in the inability of certain mothers to supply the breast milk which their
babies require, ihe natural milk may be poor in quality, insufficient in quantity, or rich and-sufficient
but endowed with properties which give rise to dyspepsia. The existence of one or more of these
defects in the breast milk of the mother must inevitably lead to a wasted condition of the baby
she is nursing, if breast feeding is continued without expert advice. Human milk is not always
of good quality, does not always suit the child that takes it, and for this reason the circulation of
pamphlets blindly insisting on breast feeding at all costs is to be deprecated. It is not uncommon
for a mother, whose milk is unsuitable, to keep her child at the breast until wasting is well marked;
when it is too late cow's milk is given, the patent foods recommended in advertisements for such
cases are tried one after the other, and finally at the eleventh hour medical advice may be sought
If death occurs the child is classed with the artificially fed, when it really belonged to a class
containing an appreciable number of children, whose start on a downward course is directly due to
their being fed with breast milk which does not meet their needs.
Occupation of Mothers.—In the next Table the infants born in and surviving to the end
of the years 1910 and 1911, have been classified according to the occupation of the mother during
pregnancy. For the purpose of comparison the infants born dead or dying in the years 1910 and
1911 from all causes and from prematurity, have been classified in the same way.

Of 420 mothers whose infants died, 31 per cent, followed some occupation during pregnancy,
and 19 per cent, were engaged in laundry work. Out of 2,771 mothers whose infants survived to
the end of the calendar year in which they were born, 658, or 24 per cent, were occupied during
pregnancy, and 352, or 13 per cent. were employed in laundries. When all kinds of employment are
considered together, the difference between the two classes of mothers is inconsiderable, but in
the case of laundry work it should be noted that the proportion of occupied women is 50 per cent.
higher among those whose infants died. So wide a discrepancy is hardly likely to be accidental,