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31
INFANTILE MORTALITY.
It is satisfactory to record a still further decline in the rate of
Infantile Mortality.
The rate (80 per 1,000 births) is not only the lowest experienced,
but is a very material reduction on the highly satisfactory rates of
recent years. I have, on other occasions, pointed out that the type of
weather experienced during recent summers has been highly favourable
to infant survival. Until we have again been subject to a hot, dry
summer it is difficult to say to what extent the low infantile mortality
is due to increased care and more intelligent fostering of infants.
Miss Gaul's report upon this province of her work I reproduce as
heretofore.
BIRTH ENQUIRIES, 1910.
" The results of some 1,200 visits made to houses from which births
have been notified under the Notification of Births Act, 1907, during the
year 1910, still show much that needs to be remedied in the methods
of rearing infants, as carried out by the mothers of the working classes,
especially in the poorest districts. There is certainly room, and indeed
great need in each part of the district, for some centre in which
mothers could receive advice and instruction in addition to that which
is given by the Health Visitor when the birth enquiry is made.
It must not be thought that the mothers do not wish to do their
best for their offspring, but their ideas are so crude that the results
cannot fail to be unsatisfactory. Indeed, nothing will hurt the
mother's feelings moro than to suggest that she is not doing her best
for the baby. The trouble is that, so often she is content to continue
the methods she has become used to seeing carried out, regardless of
the fact that these are altogether unsuitable to the infant. That
"mother fed 13 on boiled bread" is sufficient reason for giving it to
baby, although 7 of the 13 may have died in infancy.