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174
The following table is intended to show the deaths of babies
who at one time or another during their first year attended ;i
Clinic, as compared with deaths among those who never
attended. If a baby only attended once it is included in the
Clinic returns :—

2,446 babies under one year of age attended the Clinics for
the first time during 1937. Within the same period 3,263 babies
were born and 195 died; 65 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 precisely the same periods, the attendances of
new cases at the clinics do not fluctuate so greatly as to cause
serious error. Of the 130 babies tabulated who died, 35 had
attended a clinic in Croydon and 95 had not attended, i.e., 27
per cent. of the deaths were in clinic babies and 73 per cent. in
non-clinic babies. Of the 3,263 babies born, approximately 2,444
attended on calculation based on past attendances. The infantile
mortality, estimated on this basis is only 14.3 per 1,000 births for
the clinic babies, and 116 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 84 per cent. 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, 73 per cent. were found
healthy on the first visit, which may be interpreted to mean that
when a mother first attends a clinic with a child over a year old
she does so because of some difficulty in management; 66 per cent,
of babies under 1 year were being breast fed at their first visit,
this figure being less than 1936 (69); 58.4 per cent. of the ailing
babies were suffering from digestive troubles, 17.9 per cent. from
respiratory trouble, and 5.6 per cent. from rickets.