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It will be seen that a great reduction has taken place, even
though the unfavourable year of 1911 is included, and the question
arises as to the extent which infantile mortality can be further
reduced. What is the irreducible minimum? A decade ago, many
eminent authorities imagined that if an infantile mortality could
be reduced to 100 per 1,000 births, it would be as low a rate as
we could hope to attain.
The ideals of yesterday are the accomplished facts of to-day,
and our present ideals are on a much higher level than they were
10 years ago. Among the families of army officers in 1911, the
infant mortality per 1,000 births was only 44, of naval officers
and soldiers 41, of medical practitioners 39, and the rate of
infantile mortality of the middle classes generally was only 61 per
cent, of the total mortality rate among legitimate infants.
These figures show how little of our present infant mortality
is essentially inevitable.
Our ideals must be raised with every new discovery or our
system must become fossilized. Our opinions must alter, and our
methods of dealing with the problem must change and expand,
or our efforts are doomed to failure.
If the table giving the causes of death under 1 year be
referred to, it will be seen that a large percentage of the children
die from ante-natal causes. There were 19 deaths from Prematurity,
23 from Marasmus, 3 from Congenital Malformation
and 2 from Congenital Syphilis. Moreover, under the heading
Bronchitis and Pneumonia will be included not only the so-called
primary pneumonia, which occurs without any obvious precedent
departure from health, but also Pneumonia which occurs in
children who have been ailing because of defect existing at birth,