View report page

3
certain classes of the English people a degree of physical unfitness
which calls for amelioration, and, as far as possible, for prevention, and
they regard the medical inspection of children as the first practical
step towards remedy. They recognise that if this work is to produce
the best results, it should be carried out through the existing staffs of
Sanitary Authorities, who are already in intimate connection with the
factors affecting the health of the community.
Experience already points out that the defects which are found in
school children in many cases have their origin at an early period of
the child's existence, and are due to either debility at birth, improper
feeding, or to unfavourable hygienic conditions. For many years
Sanitary Authorities confined themselves solely to the removal of
insanitary conditions, but latterly they have directed their attention to
questions affecting the rearing and feeding of children, which has
resulted in a further decrease in the mortality.
Analysis of the Statistical Tables which are annually laid before
you reveals the fact that infant deaths may be divided into two groups.
The first group includes those children who die from causes of a prenatal
character which result in premature births, imperfect
development or structural deficiency (congenital defects), or in a low
vitality. Many of these children die within a few hours or days after
their birth, others die from various complaints before they are a year
old, while a few may survive till later life, burdened possibly by some
mental or bodily weakness. Scarcely any steps have been taken to deal
with the ante-natal influences which tend to these results, and it would
appear that the mortality from premature birth and congenital defects
(equal to 22.8 per 1,000 children born in England and Wales) is on the
increase. An enquiry into the conditions leading to this result may
probably also reveal that similar causes operate to some extent in
rendering mothers unable to suckle their children.
The Home Secretary has had under consideration the report of the
Physical Deterioration Committee in regard to the further regulation
of the industrial employment of women before and after childbirth,
together with the resolutions adopted by the Conference on Infantile
Mortality, held in Caxton Hall in 1906, that women should not be
employed in a workshop or factory within three months after giving
birth to a child, and that women advanced in pregnancy should not be
employed. He found that the question of imposing further restrictions
presents difficulties both from a social and administrative point of view,
but, before forming a decision, he considered it necessary to have fuller
information than is at present available, and with that view he held a
Conference of Medical Officers of Health, at which it was decided that
a systematic and simultaneous inquiry on uniform lines should be made