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50
Bronchitis and Pneumonia 78th
Diarrhceal Diseases 86th
Injury at Birth 94th
Want of Breast Milk 99th
Total under 1 year 45th
Before extending our comparisons so as to include the last
3 years, it would be well if we examined the causes of the excessive
mortality from the different diseases. We shall then probably
be in a better position to gauge the value of the work which has
been and is being done in this district.
The conditions associated . with and assisting in varying
degree in the production of excessive infant mortality are partly
social and partly sanitary; and it is easy, according to the point
of view adopted, to magnify unduly the importance of one set
of factors.
•
The effects of unsatisfactory domestic and extra-domestic
local conditions are fairly obvious, and their consequences fall
most heavily on the poorer members of the community. Of the
domestic forms of insanitation, overcrowding and lack of cleanliness
are probably the most important. For the infant it means
exposure to a stuffy atmosphere, and the storage of milk in a
contaminated and vitiated atmosphere.
Outside the house, the yards are insufficiently paved and the
ground soaked with organic filth.
To what extent and in what manner the industrial employment
of married women affects the infantile mortality is still a
matter of discussion. Possibly, the case should be stated in a
different way, and, under present social conditions, the harmful
effects are partly counteracted by the greater comfort and
increased nourishment which such employment enables the mother
to secure.
The figures for the Census have not yet been published, and
the exact number of married women employed in the laundries
cannot be given, but the approximate number of births where the
pregnant mother was in some employment has been ascertained.