View report page

53
work done, but this work formed the foundation on which other
preventive measures were based. Health visiting, infant consultations,
and other allied measures would be almost useless
apart from the remedying of sanitary defects which has been and
is proceeding in all directions.
Other factors, such as poverty and intemperance, enter into
the causation of a high infantile mortality, and their amelioration
must react upon the death-rate, but the recent reduction is more
than can be accounted for by the general measures which have
always been in operation for the removal of these unfavourable
conditions. It is more than an accident that the marked reduction
here has been coincident with the special measures which
have been taken to protect infant life, and a brief review of these
measures is more than suggestive that their relation to the
reduction is one of cause and effect.
In 1905 two Assistant Sanitary Inspectors were appointed,
but owing to the increase in other work, in spite of the additional
appointments, very little house-to-house inspection was carried
out until 1909, when an additional Inspector was appointed. The
duties of the latter officer were primarily connected with house-tohouse
inspection, more especially in the South-West Ward,
where the infantile mortality had been, and is, exceedingly high.
The duties of the Inspectors were subsequently rearranged, and
house-to-house inspection has since been carried on throughout
the district. The details and results of these inspections have
been recorded in the Annual Reports, but the following table
gives the total number of house-to-house inspections made since
1909
1909 203
1910 1,080
1911 800
1912 642
1913 594
But in addition to the house-to-house inspections, at the
beginning of every summer, a list is prepared of all the houses
where a birth has occurred within the previous twelve months,