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195
Table CV. is intended to show the deaths of babies who
at one time or another during their first year attended a clinic, as
compared wth deaths among those who had never attended. If a
baby only attended once it is included in the clinic returns:—

'2,217 babies under one year of age attended the clinics during
1931. Within the same period 3,400 babies were born and 19G
died; 43 of these latter are not included in the above table as
information concerning them was not obtainable. Although the
clinic attendance figures and the births and deaths figures do not
cover exactly the same periods, the attendances of new cases at the
clinics do not fluctuate so greatly as to cause serious error. Of the
153 babies who died, 44 had attended a clinic in Croydon and 109
had not attended, i.e., 29% of the deaths were in clinic babies and
"1% in non-clinic babies. Of the 3,400 babies bom approximately
('5% attended or would attend on calculation based on past attendances.
The infantile motality, estimated on this basis is 20 per
1,000 births for the "clinic" babies, and 49 per 1,000 births for
non-clinic babies.
The following table is interesting, especially when the figures
for under 1 year are contrasted with those for over 1 year. Approximately
85% of the former group of babies were found healthy on
their first visit and were presumably brought because their mothers
desired expert opinion and advice quite apart from treatment; in
the latter group, however, only 73% were found healthy on the first
visit, which may be interpreted to mean when a mother first attends
a clinic with a child over a year old she does so because progress is
not satisfactory; 67% of babies under 1 year were being breast fed
at their first visit, this figure being more than 1930 (65), and 23.8%
were on the bottle; 31.9% of the ailing babies were suffering from
digestive troubles, 12.1% from respiratory trouble and 9.1% from
rickets,