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1925
34
It may be instructive to give the infantile mortality of twenty
years ago in detail and compare it with the last seven years.
1899 187 per 1,000 births 1919 65 per 1,000 births
1900 168 „ „ ,, 1920 64 „ „ ,,
1901 170 ,, ,, ,, 1921 70 „ „ ,,
1902 150 „ „ „ 1922 62 „ „ ,,
1903 105 „ „ „ 1923 65 „ „ ,,
1904 143 „ „ „ 1924 56 ,, ,, ,,
1905 106 „ „ „ 1925 76 „ „ ,,
It is not claimed that the infant welfare movement is entirely
or even mainly instrumental in this remarkable reduction. Other
agencies have been at work, but ante-natal inspection and health
visiting are those with which we are now concerned, and the comparison
is important, because attempts to reduce infant mortality
are regarded by many as an interference with natural selection,
which must be inimical to the average health of those surviving.
According to this school of thought, efforts to save infant life
merely prevent the "weeding out" of the unfit, and ensure the
survival of an excessive proportion of weaklings.
This statement, of course, is difficult of direct proof or disproof.
The matter cannot be put to the test of actual experiment.
To do this it would be necessary to transfer a large sample of the
infant population of a county which has a high infantile mortality,
who had survived the excessive dangers of the first year of life,
to a county which has a low infantile mortality, and transferring an
equal number of survivors from the county which has a low infantile
mortality to a county which has a high infantile mortality. The
relative experience of two such selected populations might settle
the problem.
There are indirect ways by which the soundness of these
views can be put to the test. If we only saved the weedlings in reducing
the infantile mortality, we should expect an increased
mortality in the age periods 1-2 years and 2-5 years. But the
reduction in the mortality in these age periods is as great if
not greater than the reduction in the mortality of infants under
1 year of age. If we take again the last 7 years and compare
the number of deaths in the age-period 1-5 years with the number
of deaths in the same age period in 1905-1911, we find an average
yearly number of 91 in the period of 1905-1911 compared with
an average annual number of 30 in the last 7 years.