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1911]
62
With respect to the deaths from the diarrhœal diseases, the inquiries made
by the staff of the Public Health Department show that many of them were
undoubtedly due to improper feeding, for it has been found that in five years
only 39 deaths out of 363 due to diarrhoea, occurred among infants who were fed on
the breast alone. Thus there were only 10.7 per cent. who were fed on the breast
alone, and 89.3 per cent. otherwise. The facts are all set out in Tables XXXVII.
and XXX VI11. Can any sentient person deny that much can be done to prevent all
the improper feeding that these Tables represent? And recollect they only refer
to a portion, although the greater portion, of the infants destroyed by one class
of disease, and that therefore they do not show how many have been slain, or
how many have been maimed for life by other diseases due to improper feeding.
They must, however, set us thinking, and make us ask ourselves—What must
we do to save these children from disease and death? The answer has been
given in the reports of the Medical Officer of Health. It is to be found
constantly in the press of this country, for happily able men, who guide that
great institution, have grasped the situation, although perhaps as yet not quite
fully, and have from time to time opened their columns to most valuable contributions
on the subject. These journals can do a great deal to encourage
timid communities in doing their full duty, not in a half-and-half manner, by
adopting half and-half measures, but to its fullest extent.
Long years ago the Carthagenians sacrificed their children to a mythical
deity, Saturn, and those of them who had no children bought those of the poor
at a price for the purpose, and slew them, amidst the blowing of flutes and
hautboys and the beating of drums and timbrels that their cries might not be
heard. Are not we in these countries and in these modern days also annually
sacrificing thousands of our children on the altar of ignorance by failing to
dispel it and to replace it with knowledge? Surely we are! If the premises
be correct that want of knowledge is the cause of so many deaths—and who
can deny it? for to do so would mean a charge of deliberate murder against
those mothers who improperly feed their children—then there can be no denial
of the obligation that rests on sanitary authorities to spread the necessary
knowledge far and wide, so that an end may be put forever to the annual holocaust
which disgraces modern civilisation. During the last few years two National Conferences
have been held on infantile mortality in London, and before long it is
probable that International Conferences will be held on the same subject. Truly
it is time that the nations professing the Christian religion, to whose Divine
Founder little children were very dear, took up the subject! For, indeed, they
have closed their eyes and ears far too long to the woes of the infants in their