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1907 46
Sentiment in the case of these infants is pity and pity is one of the
greatest characteristics of the human being, without which he would be little
better than a lesser animal, which, however, is not altogether devoid of it
for as Shakespeare has written
No beast so fierce but knows some touch of pity.
The education of mothers with respect to the feeding and the preparation
of the food of their infants, if they do not nurse them, is important during the
summer quarter of the year. Facing this page is a chart, which shows how
heavy is the infantile mortality at that period, from which it will
be seen that it rose during the third quarters of the last seven years to 36 per
cent, over the general annual average. This high mortality is in a large part
due to the food, especially milk, given to children when it is sour and,
therefore, absolutely unfit for the use of infants.
The fact is that as a rule mothers among the labouring classes have no
conception as to how they can keep the food intended for their infants sweet
and fit for use, and, therefore, they require to be instructed.
On glancing at the chart, one cannot help being struck with the remarkable
increase in infantile mortality between the twentyfifth and the thirtysixth
weeks of the year, for there we see that from being 34 per cent. below the
average at the former week, it is 35 per cent. above it in the latter. Now, if a
check could be put to the excessive mortality of the third quarter, and if it
could be brought to anything like the mean of the year, an enormous number
of lives would be saved.
The best way of doing this is to teach mothers to keep their food in cool
places and where dust and contamination cannot reach it, and also to
instruct them that they must under no circumstances give milk to their babes
when once it has turned sour, for therein lurks death.
If the mortality could always be as low as in the period graphically
depicted on the chart, and extending from the twelfth to the thirtyfirst week,
there would be little cause for anxiety as to the waste of infant lives. What is
wanted is that mothers should be taught the fact that these lives can be
saved if only the proper care is taken of them.
The summer of 1907 was particularly favourable to infants, so that its
mortality only reached the small figure of 79 per 1,000 births. The cause of
this was that it was cool, the earth's temperature was low because its crust
was kept moist with rain and dust did not fly about, and the sunshine as
recorded in hours was considerably below the average. Nature taught a
very salutary lesson, for she, as it were, suggests that if we imitate her in