A paper on excessive infant mortality, its causes and their removal : read at the eighth annual meeting of the National Association, for the Promotion of Social Science, held at York, September, 1864.

  • Trench, William Stewart, 1809-1877.
Date:
1864
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: A paper on excessive infant mortality, its causes and their removal : read at the eighth annual meeting of the National Association, for the Promotion of Social Science, held at York, September, 1864. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by The Royal College of Surgeons of England. The original may be consulted at The Royal College of Surgeons of England.

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    vent the neglect of ordinary cleanliness, but secure proper food and clothing for children reared in the squalid precincts of indigence and want ? How inculcate the commonest rules of sanitary science on mothers who keep infants for days wet and dirty in close un- ventilated rooms, or huddle them half smothered in the corners of beds occupied by two, sometimes three, or more adults of the family? Nor is it mere apathy, ignorance, or carelessness against which we have to contend. The researches of Lyon Playfair drew public attention to the fearful extent to which, in the families of our working classes, laudanum and other narcotics were indiscriminately ’administered to children for the purpose of quieting them either at night or during the absence of their parents. Though this baneful practice is not as rife in Liverpool as in the manufacturing districts? yet I have many reasons to believe that it extensively prevails. The formulas most frequently used are syrup of poppies, Godfrey’s cordial, and paregoric; but some druggists vend their own nostrums under attractive names. One druggist, whose ‘^Infant Preserva- tive ” has a local celebrity, informed me that from his own shop he dispenses on an average a gallon and a-half to two gallons per week, independently of what is sold by his agents in other parts of .the town. As on the labels of direction for use he prescribes three drops to an infant two or three days old, and gradually increases the dose to a teaspoonful and a-half for a child of two years old, some idea may be formed of the large number of children to whom it is ad- ministered. The narcotics are given nightly at bedtime and on washing days when the mothers are busy or on occasions when they go out for any length of time. Then, if we turn to the records of the Coroner’s Court during the Decenniad, we find that of the 2,215 instances of sudden or vio- lent deaths of children, no fewer than 828 wmre sufibcated in bed; the occasion being too frequently the drunkenness of parents. How to correct these moral and sanitary evils is a problem most difiicult of solution. Laws, however stringent, are perfectly impotent for good in this respect; for the offenders are by their very wretched- ness and squalid misery beyond the penalties of fines. The remedy must be sought for in the effects of moral suasion rather than in legislative restrictions; for, unless the heart